THE  MINERS  DREAM. 


ROUGHING 


IT 


BY 


MARK  TWAIN". 

(SAMUEL  L.^CLEMENS.) 


FULLY  ILLUSTRATED  BY  EMINENT  ARTISTS, 


BY  SUBSCRIPTION  ONT/Y,  A!ST>  TfOT  FOB  SALE  IX  BOGK  STORES.) 
(RESIDENTS  OF  ANY  8TATK  DESIEIXO  A  COPY  SHOULD  ADDRESS  THE  PUBLISHERS  A3  BELOW.) 


EIGHTY-FIFTH  THOUSAND 


HARTFORD: 
AMERICAN    PUBLISHING     COMPANY, 

1875. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1872,  by  the 

AMERICAN  PUBLISHING  COMPANY, 
In  the  office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


Add'U 

fc*  $ 

GIFT 


§7 


TO 

CALVIN  H.  HIGBIE, 

Of  California, 

An  Hoaest  Sfan,  a  Genial  Comrade,  and  a  Steadfast  Friend. 

THIS  BOOK  IS  INSCRIBED 

B?  the  Author, 

In  Memory  of  the  Curious  Time 

When  We  Two 
7E&E  UILUONAI3BS  FOS  TE1T  DAYS. 


PEEFATOEY. 


THIS  book  is  merely  a  personal  narrative,  and  not  a  pre 
tentious  history  or  a  philosophical  dissertation.  It  is  a  record 
of  several  years  of  variegated  vagabondizing,  and  its  object  is 
rather  to  help  the  resting  reader  while  away  an  idle  hour 
than  afflict  him  with  metaphysics,  or  goad  him  with  science. 
Still,  there  is  information  in  the  volume;  information  con 
cerning  an  interesting  episode  in  the  history  of  the  Far  West, 
about  which  no  books  have  been  written  by  persons  who  were 
on  the  ground  in  person,  and  saw  the  happenings  of  the  time 
with  their  own  eyes.  I  allude  to  the  rise,  growth  and  culmina 
tion  of  the  silver-mining  fever  in  Nevada — a  curious  episode, 
in  some  respects ;  the  only  one,  of  its  peculiar  kind,  that  has 
occurred  in  the  land ;  and  the  only  one,  indeed,  that  is  likely 
to  occur  in  it. 

Yes,  take  it  all  around,  there  is  quite  a  good  deal  of  infor 
mation  in  the  book.  I  regret  this  very  much ;  but  really  it 
could  not  be  helped :  information  appears  to  stew  out  of  me 
naturally,  like  the  precious  ottar  of  roses  out  of  the  otter. 
Sometimes  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  I  would  give  worlds  if  I 
could  retain  my  facts ;  but  it  cannot  be.  The  more  I  calk  up 
the  sources,  and  the  tighter  I  get,  the  more  I  leak  wisdom. 
Therefore,  I  can  only  claim  indulgence  at  the  hands  of  the 
reader,  not  justification. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


PAGE 

1.  THE  HIKERS'  DREAM  (Frix  PAGE,)  Face  Page FRONTISPIECE. 

2.  ENVIOUS  CONTEMPLATIONS 20 

3.  INNOCENT  DREAMS 21 

4.  LIGHT  TRAVELING  ORDER 23 

5.  THE  "  ALLEN  " 23 

6.  INDUCEMENTS  TO  PURCHASE 24 

7.  THE  FACETIOUS  DRIVER 25 

8.  PLEASING  NEWS 26 

9.  THE  SPHYNX 27 

10.  MEDITATION 32 

11.  ON  BUSINESS 33 

12.  AUTHOR  AS  GULLIVER 33 

13.  A  TOUGH  STATEMENT 35 

14.  THIRD  TRIP  OF  THE  UNABRIDGED  38 

15.  A  POWERFUL  GLASS 41 

16.  AN  HEIRLOOM 42 

17.  OUR  LANDLORD 42 

18.  DIGNIFIED  EXILE 43 

19.  DRINKING  SLUMGULLION 44 

20.  A  JOKE  WITHOUT  CREAM 45 

21.  PULLMAN  CAR  DINING-SALOON 47 

22.  OUR  MORNING  RIDE 49 

23.  PRAIRIE  DOGS 50 

24.  A  CAYOTE 51 

25.  SHOWING  RESPECT  TO  RELATIVES 52 

26.  THE  CONDUCTOR 55 

27.  TEACHING  A  SUBORDINATE 57 

28.  JACK  AND  THE  ELDERLY  PILGRIM 58 

29.  CROSSING  THE  PLATTE 61 

30.  I  BEGAN  TO  PRAY 62 

31.  A  NEW  DEPARTURE 63 

82.  SUSPENDED  OPERATIONS 65 

83.  A  WONDERFUL  LIE 68 

&4.  TAIL-PIECE...                                                                                                              .  60 


vi  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


35.  HEEK  HE  COMES 7t 

36.  CHANGING  HORSES 72 

37.  BIDING  THE  AVALANCHE 7S 

38.  INDIAN  COUNTRY 76 

39.  A  PROPOSED  FIST  FIGHT 81 

40.  FROM  BEHIND  THE  DOOR 82 

41.  SLADE  AS  AN  EXECUTIONER 64 

•1'2.  AN  UNPLEASANT  VIEW 85 

43.  UNAPPRECIATED  POLITENESS 88 

44.  SLADE  IN  COURT 92 

45.  A  WIFE'S  LAMENTATIONS 95 

46.  THE  CONCENTRATED  INHABITANT 99 

47.  THE  SOUTH  PASS  (FULL  PAGE,)  Face  Page 100 

48.  THE  PARTED  STREAMS iOl 

49.  IT  SPOILED  THE  MELON 102 

50.  GIVEN  OVER  TO  THE  CAYOTE  AND  THE  RAVEN  103 

51.  "  DON'T  COME  HERE  " 104 

52.  "THINK  I'M  A  FOOL" 105 

53.  THE  "  DESTROYING  ANGEL  " 106 

54.  EFFECTS  OF  "VALLEY  TAN" 109 

55.  ONE  CREST 110 

56.  THE  OTHER 110 

57.  THE  VAGRANT Ill 

58.  PORTRAIT  OF  HEBER  KIMBALL 112 

59.  PORTRAIT  OE  BRIGHAM  YOUNG 118 

60.  THE  CONTRACTORS  BEFORE  THE  KING 116 

61.  I  WAS  TOUCHED 1 17 

62.  THE  ENDOWMENT,  TAIL-PIECE 118 

63.  FAVORITE  WIFE  AND  D.  4 120 

64.  NEEDED  MARKING i2l 

65.  A  REMARKABLE  RESEMBLANCE 124 

66.  THE  FAMILY  BEDSTEAD 126 

67.  THE  MIRACULOUS  COMPASS 131 

68.  THREE  SIDES  TO  A  QUESTION 137 

69.  RESULT  OF  HIGH  FREIGHTS 138 

70.  A  SHRIVELED  QUARTER 139 

71.  AN  OBJECT  OF  PITY 140 

72.  TAIL-PIECE 141 

73.  TAIL-PIECE 145 

74.  GOSHOTT  INDIANS  HANGING  AROUND  STATIONS 147 

75.  THE  DRIVE  FOR  LIFE 148 

76.  GREELEY  's  RIDE 150 

77.  BOTTLING  AN  ANECDOTE 154 

78.  TAIL-PIECE 156 

79-  CONTEMPLATION » , .  158 

80.  THE  WASHOE  ZEPHYR 159 

81.  THE  GOVERNOR'S  HOUSE 161 

82.  DARK  DISCLOSURES , 162 

83.  THE  IRISH  BRIGADE 163 

84.  RECREATION 164 

85.  THE  TARANTULA 165 

86.  LIGHT  THROWN  ON  THE  SUBJECT 166 

8v.  I  STEERED 169 

88.  THE  INVALID 170 

33  THE  L.ESTOBED 171 


ILLUSTRATIONS.  vii 

90.  OtnsIIousB IT* 

91.  AT  BUSINESS 174 

92.  FIGHT  AT  LAKJS  TAHOE  (Fuxx.?AGB,)  Face  Page 176 

93.  "  YOU  MIGHT  THINK  HIM  AN  AFRICAN  HORSE  ' 179 

94.  UNEXPECTED  ELEVATION 180 

95.  UNIVERSALLY  UNSETTLED 181 

96.  RIDING  THE  PLUG 182 

97.  WANTED  EXERCISE 183 

98.  BORROWING  MADE  EASY 186 

99.  FREE  RIDES : 188 

100.  SATISFACTORY  VOUCHERS 190 

101.  NEEDS  PRAYING  FOR 191 

102.  MAP  OF  TOLL  ROADS 192 

103.  UNLOADING  SILVER  BRICKS 194 

104.  VIEW  IN  HXIMBOLDT  MOUNTAINS 196 

105.  GOING  TO  HUMBOLDT 199 

106.  BALLOU'S  BEDFELLOW 201 

107.  PLEASURES  OF  CAMPING  OUT 208 

108.  THE  SECRET  SEARCH 205 

109.  "  CAST  YOUR  EYE  ON  THAT  " 207 

110.  "  WE'VE  GOT  IT  " 210 

111.  INCIPIENT  MILLIONAIRES 212 

112.  ROCKS— TAIL-PIECE 214 

113.  "  Do  You  SEE  IT  ?  " 216 

114.  FAREWELL  SWEET  RIVER 218 

115.  THE  RESCUE 219 

116.  "  MR.  ARKANSAS  " 222 

117.  AN  ARMED  ALLY 225 

118.  CROSSING  THE  FLOOD 227 

119.  ADVANCE  IN  A  CIRCLE 229 

120.  THE  SONGSTER 230 

121.  THE  FOXES  HAVE  HOLES— TAIL-PIECE 231 

122.  A  FLAT  FAILURE 233 

123.  THE  LAST  MATCH 234 

1*4  DISCARDED  VICES 236 

125.  FLAMES— TAIL-PIECE 237 

126.  CAMPING  IN  THE  SNOW  (FULL  PAGE,)  Face  Page 238 

127.  IT  WAS  THUS  WE  MKT 240 

128.  TAKING  POSSESSION 242 

129.  A  GREAT  EFFORT 244 

130.  REARRANGING  AND  SHIFTING 246 

131.  WE  LEFT  LAMENTED 249 

132.  PICTURE  OF  TOWNSEND'S  TUNNEL 250 

133.  QUARTZ  MILL 253 

134.  ANOTHER  PROCESS  OF  AMALGAMATION 254 

135.  FIRST  QUARTZ  MILL  IN  NEVADA 256 

136.  A  SLICE  OF  RICH  ORE 257 

137.  THE  SAVED  BROTHER 200 

138.  ON  A  SECRET  EXPEDITION 263 

139.  LAKE  MONO  (FULL  PAGE,)  Face  Page 265 

140.  RATHER  SOAPY 266 

141.  A  BARK  UNDER  FULL  SAIL 266 

142.  A  MODEL  BOARDING  HOUSE 2«8 

143.  LIFE  AMID  DEATH 271 

144.  A  JUMP  FOR  LIFE 273 


viii  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

145.  "  STOVE  HEAP  GONK  " 275 

146.  INTERVIEWING  THE  "  WIDE  WEST  "  279 

147.  WORTH  A  MILLION 280 

148.  MILLIONAIRES  LAYING  PLANS 282 

149.  DANGEROUSLY  SICK 287 

150.  WORTH  NOTHING 288 

151.  THE  COMPROMISE 290 

152.  ONE  OF  MY  FAILURES 293 

153.  TARGET  SHOOTING 294 

154.  As  CITY  EDITOR 595 

155.  THE  ENTIRE  MARKET 2% 

156.  A  FRIEND  INDEED 297 

157.  UNION— TAIL-PIECE 298 

158.  AN  EDUCATIONAL  REPORT 301 

159.  No  PARTICULAR  HURRY 302 

160.  BIRDS  EYE  VIEW  OF  VIRGINIA  CITY  AND  MT.  DAVIDSON 304 

161.  ANEW  MINE 307 

162.  TRYAFBW 309 

163.  PORTRAIT  OF  MR.  STEWART 310 

164.  SELLING  A  MINE 311 

165.  COULDN'T  WAIT 315 

166.  THE  GREAT  "  FLOUR  SACK  "  PROCESSION  (FULL  PAGE,)  Face  Page 317 

167.  TAIL-PIECE 31? 

168.  A  NABOB 32*. 

169.  MAGNIFICENCE  AND  MISERY 323 

170.  A  FRIENDLY  DRIVER 326 

171.  ASTONISHES  THE  NATIVES 827 

172.  COL.  JACK  WEAKENS 32* 

173.  SCOTTY  BRIGGS  AND  THE  MINISTER 33 1 

174.  REGULATING  MATTERS  835 

175.  DIDN'T  SHOOK  HIS  MOTHER 837 

176.  SCOTTY  AS  S.  S.  TEACHER 838 

177.  THE  MAN  WHO  HAD  KILLED  HIS  DOZEN 840 

178.  THE  UNPREJUDICED  JURY 842 

179.  A  DESPERADO  GIVING  REFERENCE 344 

180.  SATISFYING  A  FOE 846 

181.  TAIL-PIECE 351 

182.  GIVING  INFORMATION 353 

183.  A  WALKING  BATTERY 855 

184.  OVERHAULING  HIS  MANIFEST 358 

185.  SHIP— TAIL-PIECE 359 

186.  THE  HEROES  AND  HEROINES  OF  THE  STORY 361 

187.  DISSOLUTE  AUTHOR 362 

188.  THERE  SAT  THE  LAWYER 365 

189.  JONAH  OUTDONE 367 

190.  DOLLINGER S70 

191.  Low  BRIDGE 871 

192.  SHORTENING  SAIL 372 

193.  LIGHTENING  SHIP 873 

194.  THE  MARVELLOUS  RESCUE 375 

195.  SILVER  BRICKS * 377 

196.  TIMBER  SUPPORTS , 379 

197.  FROM  GALLERY  TO  GALLERY 589 

198.  JIMBLAINE 884 

199.  HUBBAH  FOE  NlXON 385 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


2tX).  Miss  WAGXER 886 

201.  WAITING  FOB  A  CUSTOMER 887 

202.  WAS  TO  BK  TIIKKK 388 

203.  THE  MOXUMENT 889 

2(4.  WHERE  is  THE  HAH  ?— TAIL-PIECE 390 

203.  CHINESE  WASH  BILL  892 

206.  IMITATION 393 

207.  CHINESE  LOTTERY 396 

208.  CHINESE  MERCHANT  AT  HOME— TAIL  PIECE 397 

209.  Ax  OLD  FRIEND 399 

210.  FAREWELL  AND  ACCIDENT 403 

211.  "  GIMME  A  CIGAS  " 404 

212.  THE  HERALD  OF  GLAD  NEWS 406 

213.  FLAG— TAIL-PIECE 407 

214.  A  NEW  EXGLAXD  SCEXE 409 

215.  A  VARIABLE  CLIMATE 410 

216.  SACRAMEXTO  AND  THBEE  HOURS  AWAY 413 

217.  "FETCH  HER  OUT" 416 

218.  "  WELL  IF  IT  AINT  A  CHILD  " 417 

219.  A  GENUINE  LITE  WOMAX 418 

220.  THE  GRACE  OF  A  KAXGAROO 420 

221.  DREAMS  DISSIPATED 421 

222.  THE  "  ONE  HORSE  SHAY  "  OUTDONE 422 

223.  HARD  ox  THE  INXOCENTS 423 

224.  DRY  BOXES  SHAKEX 423 

225.  "On!  WHAT  SHALL  I  DO!" 424 

226.  "GET  OUT  YOUR  TOWEL  MY  DEAR" 425 

227.  "WE  WILL  OMIT  THE  BENEDICTION  " 426 

228.  SLINKING 429 

229.  A  PRIZE 431 

230.  A  LOOK  ix  AT  THE  WINDOW 432 

231.  "  Do  IT  STRANGER '' 433 

232.  THE  OLD  COLLEGIATE 436 

233.  STRIKING  A  POCKET 433 

234.  TOM  QUARTZ  440 

235.  Ax  ADVANTAGE  TAKEX 441 

236.  AFTER  AX  EXCURSIOX 442 

237.  THE  THREE  CAPTAIXS 445 

238.  THE  OLD  ADMIRAL 448 

239.  THE  DESERTED  FIELD 449 

240.  WILLIAMS 453 

241.  SCEXE  ox  THE  SANDWICH  ISLANDS , ,  455 

242.  FASHIONABLE  ATTIRE .456 

243.  A  BITE 457 

244.  RECONNOITERING 458 

245.  EATING  TAMARINDS 458 

246.  LOOKING  FOR  MISCHIEF 4C1 

247.  A  FAMILY  LIKENESS 462 

248.  SIT  DOWN  TO  LISTEN 467 

249.  "  MY  BROTHER,  WE  Twixs  " 469 

250.  EXTRAORDINARY  CAPERS 470 

251.  A  LOAD  OF  HAY -iu 

252.  MAECHIXG  THROUGH  GEORGIA— TAIL-PIECE 472 

253.  SAXDWICH  ISLAXD  GIRLS 474 

254.  ORIGINAL  HAM  SANDWICH ...  475 


x  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

255.  "  I  KISSED    HIM  FOB  His  MOTHEB" 478 

256.  AN  OUTSIDER— TAIL-PIECE 479 

257.  AN  ENEMY'S  PRAYER 482 

238.  VISITING  THE  MISSIONARIES 484 

250.  FULL  CHTTBCH  DKESS 485 

260.  PLAYING  EMPIRE 486 

261.  ROYALTY  AND  ITS  SATELLITES 488 

262.  A  HIGH  PRIVATE- -TAIL-PIECE 489 

263.  A  MODERN  FUNERAL 492 

264.  FORMER  FTTNERAL  ORGIES 497 

265.  A  PASSENGER 499 

266.  MOONLIGHT  ON  THE  WATER 501 

267.  GOING  INTO  THE  MOUNTAINS  (FULL  PAGE,)  Face  Page 502 

268.  EVENING— TAIL-PIECE 503 

269.  THE  DEMENTED 505 

270.  DISCUSSING  TURNIPS 507 

271.  GREELE Y'S  LETTER 509 

272.  KEALAKEKUA  BAY  AND  COOK'S  MONUMENT 514 

273.  THE  GHOSTLY  BUILDERS 518 

274.  ON  GUARD 519 

275.  BREAKING  THE  TABU 521 

276.  SURF  BATHING 525 

277.  SURF  BATHING  A  FAILURE 526 

278.  CITY  OF  REFUGE 527 

279.  THE  QUEEN'S  ROCK 529 

280.  TAIL-PIECE 531 

281.  THE  PILLAR  OF  FIRE 533 

282.  THE  CRATEE 535 

283.  BROKE  THROUGH 539 

284.  FIRE  FOUNTAINS 540 

285.  LAVA  STREAM 542 

286.  A  TIDAL  WAVE 543 

287.  TRIP  ON  THE  MILKY  WAY 545 

288.  A  VIEW  IN  THE  IAO  VALLEY  (FULL  PAGE,)  Face  Page 547 

289.  MAGNIFICENT  SPORT 519 

290.  ELEVEN  MILES  TO  SEE 553 

291.  CHASED  BY  A  STORM 554 

292.  LEAVING  WORK 555 

293.  TAIL-PIECE 557 

294.  OUR  AMUSEMENTS 559 

295.  SEVERE  CASE  OF  STAGE  FRIGHT 561 

296.  MY  THREE  PARQUETTE  ALLIES 562 

297.  SAWYER  IN  THE  CIRCLE 563 

298.  A  PREDICAMENT 561 

299.  THE  BEST  OF  THE  JOKE 569 

300.  THB  END 57C 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I.  PAG* 

My  Brother  appointed  Secretary  of  Nevada — I  Envy  His  Prospective 
Adventures — Am  Appointed  Private  Secretary  Under  Him — My 
Contentment  Complete — Packed  in  One  Hour — Dreams  and  Visions 
—On  the  Missouri  River— A  Bully  Boat 19 

CHAPTER   II. 

Arrive  at  St.  Joseph — Only  Twenty-five  Pounds  Baggage  Allowed — 
Farewell  to  Kid  Gloves  and  Dress  Coats — Armed  to  the  Teeth — 
The  "  Allen  " — A  Cheerful  Weapon — Persuaded  to  Buy  a  Mule — 
Schedule  of  Luxuries — We  Leave  the  "States" — "Our  Coach" 
— Mails  for  the  Indians — Between  a  Wink  and  an  Earthquake — A 
Modern  Sphynx  and  How  She  Entertained  Us — A  Sociable  Heifer.  22 

CHAPTER  III. 

"  The  Thoroughbrace  is  Broke  " — Mails  Delivered  Properly — Sleeping 
Under  Difficulties — A  Jackass  Rabbit  Meditating,  and  on  Business 
— A  Modern  Gulliver — Sage-brush — Overcoats  as  an  Article  of  Diet 
— Sad  Fate  of  a  Camel — Warning  to  Experimenters 29 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Making  Our  Bed — Assaults  by  the  Unabridged — At  a  Station — Our 
Driver  a  Great  and  Shining  Dignitary — Strange  Place  for  a  Front- 
yard —  Accommodations — Double  Portraits  —  An  Heirloom — Our 
Worthy  Landlord — "  Fixings  and  Things  " — An  Exile — Slumgul- 
lion— A  Well  Furnished  Table— The  Landlord  Astonished— Table 
Etiquette — Wild  Mexican  Mules — Stage-coaching  and  Railroading.  37 

CHAPTER  V. 

New  Acquaintances — The  Cayote — A  Dog's  Experiences — A  Disgusted 
Dog — The  Relatives  of  the  Cayote — Meals  Taken  Away  from  Home  48 

CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Division  Superintendent — The  Conductor — The  Driver — One  Hun 
dred  and  Fifty  Miles'  Drive  Without  Sleep — Teaching  a  Subor 
dinate — Our  Old  Friend  Jack  and  a  Pilgrim — Ben  Holliday  Com 
pared  to  Moses 54 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Overland  City — Crossing  the  Platte — Bemis's  Buffalo  Hunt — Assault 
by  a  Buffalo — Bemis's  Horse  Goes  Crazy — An  Impromptu  Circus 
— A  New  Departure — Bemis  Finds  Refuge  in  a  Tree — Escapes 
Finally  by  a  Wonderful  Method CO 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  Pony  Express — Fifty  Miles  Without  Stopping — "  Here  he  Comes  " 

— Alkali  Water — Riding  an  Avalanche — Indian  Massacre 70 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   IX. 

Among  the  Indians — An  Unfair  Advantage — Laying  on  our  Arms — A 
Midnight  Murder — Wrath  of  Outlaws — A  Dangerous,  yet  Valuable 
Citizen 75 

CHAPTER  X. 

History  of  Slade — A  Proposed  Fist-fight — Encounter  with  Jules — 
Paradise  of  Outlaws — Slade  as  Superintendent — As  Executioner — 
A  Doomed  Whisky  Seller — A  Prisoner — A  Wife's  Bravery — An 
Ancient  Enemy  Captured — Enjoying  a  Luxury — Hob-nobbing  with 
Slade— Too  Polite— A  Happy  Escape 80 

CHAPTER  XI. 

Slade  in  Montana — "On  a  Spree" — In  Court — Attack  on  a  Judge — 
Arrest  by  the  Vigilantes — Turn  out  of  the  Miners — Execution  of 
Slade — Lamentations  of  His  Wife — Was  Slade  a  Coward  ? 90 

CHAPTER  XII. 

A  Mormon  Emigrant  Train— The  Heart  of  the  Rocky  Mountains — 
Pure  Saleratus — A  Natural  Ice-House — An  Entire  Inhabitant — In 
Sight  of  "  Eternal  Snow  "—The  South  Pass— The  Parting  Streams 
— An  Unreliable  Letter  Carrier — Meeting  of  Old  Friends— A  Spoiled 
Watermelon — Down  the  Mountain — A  Scene  of  Desolation — Lost 
in  the  Dark — Unnecessary  Advice — U.  S.  Troops  and  Indians — Sub- 
7  lime  Spectacle — Another  Delusion  Dispelled — Among  the  Angels. .  9? 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

Mormons  and  Gentiles— Exhilarating  Drink,  and  its  Effect  on  Bemis — 
Salt  Lake  City — A  Great  Contrast — A  Mormon  Vagrant — Talk  with 
a  Saint — A  Visit  to  the  "  King  " — A  Happy  Simile 108 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

Mormon  Contractors — How  Mr.  Street  Astonished  Them — The  Case 
Before  Brigham  Young,  and  How  he  Disposed  of  it — Polygamy 
Viewed  from  a  New  Position 114 

CHAPTER  XV. 

A  Gentile  Den — Polygamy  Discussed — Favorite  Wife  and  D.  4 — 
Hennery  for  Retired  Wives — Children  Need  Marking — Cost  of  a 
Gift  to  No.  6 — A  Penny-whistle  Gift  and  its  Effects — Fathering  the 
Foundlings— It  Resembled  Him— The  Family  Bedstead 119 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

The  Mormon  Bible — Proofs  of  its  Divinity — Plagiarism  of  its  Authors 
—Story  of  Nephi— Wonderful  Battle— Kilkenny  Cats  Outdone 127 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

Three  Sides  to  all  Questions — Everything  "  A  Quarter  " — Shriveled  Up 
— Emigrants  and  White  Shirts  at  a  Discount — "  Forty -Niners  " — 
Above  Par — Real  Happiness 136 

CHAPTER   XVIII. 

Alkali  Desert — Romance  of  Crossing  Dispelled — Alkali  Dust— Effect  on 
the  Mules — Universal  Thanksgiving 142 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 

CHAPTER  XIX.  PAGE 

ITie  Digger  Indians  Compared  with  the  Bushmen  of  Africa — Food, 
Life  and  Characteristics — Cowardly  Attack  on  a  Stage  Coach — A 
Brave  Driver— The  Noble  Red  Man 146 

CHAPTER  XX. 

The  Great  American  Desert — Forty  Miles  on  Bones — Lakes  Without 
Outlets — Greely's  Remarkable  Ride — Hank  Monk,  the  Renowned 
Driver — Fatal  Effects  of  "  Corking  "  a  Story — Bald-Headed  Anec 
dote 150 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

Alkali  Dust — Desolation  and  Contemplation — Carson  City — Our  Journey 
Ended — We  are  Introduced  to  Several  Citizens — A  Strange  Rebuke 
— A  Washoe  Zephyr  at  Play— Its  Office  Hours — Governor's  Palace — 
Government  Offices— Our  French  Landlady  Bridget  O'Flannigan — 
Shadow  Secrets — Cause  for  a  Disturbance  at  Once — The  Irish  Bri 
gade — Mrs.  O'Flannigan's  Boarders — The  Surveying  Expedition — 
Escape  of  the  Tarantulas 157 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

The  Son  of  a  Nabob — Start  for  Lake  Tahoe — Splendor  of  the  Views — 
Trip  on  the  Lake — Camping  Out — Reinvigorating  Climate — Clear 
ing  a  Tract  of  Land — Securing  a  Title — Outhouse  and  Fences 168  f) 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

A  Happy  Life— Lake  Tahoe  and  its  Moods — Transparency  of  the  Waters 
— A  Catastrophe— Fire  !  Fire  ! — A  Magnificent  Spectacle — Homeless 
Again— We  take  to  the  Lake — A  Storm — Return  to  Carson 173 

CHAPTER   XXIV. 

Resolve  to  Buy  a  Horse — Horsemanship  in  Carson — A  Temptation — 
Advice  Given  Me  Freely — I  Buy  the  Mexican  Plug — My  First  Ride 
— A  Good  Bucker — I  Loan  the  Plug — Experience  of  Borrowers — At 
tempts  to  Sell — Expense  of  the  Experiment — A  Stranger  Taken  In .  1 78 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

The  Mormons  in  Nevada — How  to  Persuade  a  Loan  from  Them — Early 
History  of  the  Territory — Silver  Mines  Discovered — The  New  Terri 
torial  Government — A  Foreign  One  and  a  Poor  One — Its  Funny 
Struggles  for  Existence — No  Credit,  no  Cash — Old  Abe  Currey  Sus 
tains  it  and  its  Officers — Instructions  and  Vouchers — An  Indian's 
Endorsement — Toll-Gates 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

The  Silver  Fever— State  of  the  Market— Silver  Bricks— Tales  Told- 

Off  for  the  Humboldt  Mines 198 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

Oar  manner  of  going— Incidents  of  the  Trip — A  Warm  but  Too  Familiar 
a  Bedfellow — Mr.  Ballou  Objects— Sunshine  amid  Clouds— Safely 
Arrived.  ,  .198 


1S5 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

Arrive  at  the  Mountains — Building  Our  Cabin — My  First  Prospecting  Tour — 
My  First  Gold  Mine — Pockets  Filled  With  Treasures — Filtering  the  News 
to  My  Companions— The  Bubble  Pricked— All  Not  Gold  That  Glitters. . .  20* 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 

Out  Prospecting — A  Silver  Mine  At  Last — Making  a  Fortune  With  Sledge  and 

Drill— A  Hard  Road  to  Travel— We  Own  in  Claims— A  Rocky  Country .   211 

CHAPTER  XXX. 

Disinterested  Friends — How  "Feet"  Were  Sold — We  Quit  Tunnelling— A  Trip 
to  Esmeralda — My  Companions — An  Indian  Prophesy — A  Flood — Our 
Quarters  During  It 215 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 

The  Guests  at  "Honey  Lake  Smith's" — "Bully  Old  Arkansas" — "  Our  Land 
lord  "—Determined  to  Fight— The  Landlord's  Wife— The  Bully  Con 
quered  by  Her — Another  Start — Crossing  the  Carson — A  Narrow  Escape 
— Following  Our  Own  Track — A  New  Guide — Lost  in  the  Snow 221 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 

Desperate  Situation — Attempts  to  Make  a  Fire — Our  Horses  leave  us — We 
Find  Matches — One,  Two,  Three  and  the  Last — No  Fire — Death  Seems 
Inevitable — We  Mourn  Over  Our  Evil  Lives — Discarded  Vices — We  For 
give  Each  Other — An  Affectionate  Farewell — The  Sleep  of  Oblivion. . .  232 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

Return  of  Consciousness — Ridiculous  Developments — A  Station  House — Bit 
ter  Feelings — Fruits  of  Repentance — Resurrected  Vices 238 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

(About  Carson — General  Buncombe — Hyde  vs.  Morgan — How  Hyde  Lost  His 
Ranch — The  Great  Landslide  Case — The  Trial — General  Buncombe  in 
Court— A  Wonderful  Decision— A  Serious  Afterthought 241 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 

A  New  Travelling  Companion — All  Full  and  No  Accommodations — How  Cap 
tain  Nye  found  Room — and  Caused  Our  Leaving  to  be  Lamented — The 
Uses  of  Tunnelling — A  Notable  Example — We  Go  into  the  "  Claim  "  Bus 
iness  and  Fail— At  the  Bottom 241 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

A  Quartz  Mill — Amalgamation — "  Screening  Tailings  " — First  Quartz  Mill  in 

Nevada — Fire  Assay— A  Smart  Assayer — I  stake  for  an  advance 252 

CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

The  Whiteman  Cement  Mine — Story  of  its  Discovery — A  Secret  Expedition 
— A  Nocturnal  Adventure — A  Distressing  Position — A  Failure  and  a 
Week's  Holiday 259 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

Mono  Lake — Shampooing  Made  Easy — Thoughtless  Act  of  Our  Dog  and  the 
Results — Lye  Water — Curiosities  of  the  Lake — Free  Hotel — Some  Funny 
Incidents  a  Little  Overdrawn .265 


CONTENTS.  xv 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

Visit  to  the  Islands  in  Lake  Mono — Ashes  and  Desolation — Life  Amid  Death 
Our  Boat  Adrift — A  Jump  For  Life — A  Storm  On  the  Lake — A  Mass  of 
Soap  Suds — Geological  Curiosities — A  Week  On  the  Sierras — A  Narrow 
Escape  From  a  Funny  Explosion — "  Stove  Heap  Gone  " 270 

CHAPTER  XL.    4,; 

The  "Wide  West"  Mine— It  is  u Interviewed "  by  Higbie— A  Blind  Lead- 
Worth  a  Million — We  are  Rich  At  Last — Plans  for  the  Future 277 

CHAPTER  XLI. 

A  Rheumatic  Patient — Day  Dreams — An  Unfortunate  Stumble — I  Leave  Sud 
denly — Another  Patient — Higbie  in  the  Cabin — Our  Balloon  Bursted — 
Worth  Nothing — Regrets  and  Explanations — Our  Third  Partner 285 

CHAPTER  XLII. 

What  to  do  Next  ?— Obstacles  I  Had  Met  With— "Jack  of  All  Trades"— 

Mining  Again — Target  Shooting — I  Turn  City  Editor — I  Succeed  Finely  292 

CHAPTER  XLIII. 

ify  Friend  Boggs — The  School  Report — Boggs  Pays  Me  An  Old  Debt — Virgin 
ia  City 299 

CHAPTER  XLIV. 

Hush  Times— Plenty  of  Stock— Editorial  Puffing— Stocks  Given  Me— Salting 

Mines— A  Tragedian  In  a  New  Role 306 

CHAPTER  XLV. 

Hush  Times  Continue — Sanitary  Commission  Fund — Wild  Enthusiasm  of  the 
People — Would  not  wait  to  Contribute — The  Sanitary  Flour  Sack — It 
is  Carried  to  Gold  Hill  and  Dayton — Final  Reception  in  Virginia — Results 
of  the  Sale— A  Grand  Total 313 

CHAPTER  XLVI. 

The  Nabobs  of  Those  Days — John  Smith  as  a  Traveler — Sudden  Wealth— A 
Sixty-Thousand-Dollar  Horse — A  Smart  Telegraph  Operator — A  Nabob 
in  New  York  City — Charters  an  Omnibus — "Walk  in,  It's  All  Free" — 
"You  Can't  Pay  a  Cent  " — "Hold  On,  Driver,  I  Weaken  " — Sociability 
of  New  Yorkers" 320 

CHAPTER  XLVII. 

Buck  Fanshaw's  Death— The  Cause  Thereof— Preparations  for  His  Burial — 
Scotty  Briggs  the  Committee  Man — He  Visits  the  Minister — Scotty  Can't 
Play  His  Hand— The  Minister  Gets  Mixed— Both  Begin  to  See— "  All 
Down  Again  But  Nine" — Buck  Fanshaw  as  a  Citizen — How  To  "Shook  Your 
Mother  "— TheJ£uneral— Scottv  Briggs  as  a  Sunday  School  Teacher 329 

CHAPTER  XLVIH. 

The  First  Twenty-Six  Graves  in  Nevada— The  Prominent  Men  of  the  County— 
The  Man  Who  Had  Killed  His  Dozen— Trial  by  Jury— Specimen  Jurors— 
A  Private  Grave  Yard— The  Desperadoes— Who  They  Killed— Waking  up 
the  Weary  Passenger— Satisfaction  Without  Fighting 839 


xvi  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XLIX. 

Fatal  Shooting  Affray  —  Robbery  and  Desperate  Affray  —  A  Specimen  City  Offi 

cial—A  Marked  "Man—  A  Street  Fight—  Punishment  of  Crime  ..........   34  7 

CHAPTER  L.  tro 

Captain  Ned  Blakely  —  Bill  Nookes  Receives  Desired  Information  —  Killing  of 

Blakely's    Mate—  A  Walking   Battery—  Blakely  Secures  Nookes—  Hang 

1  First  and  Be  Tried  Afterwards—  Captain  Blakely  as  a  Chaplain—  The 

First  Chapter  of  Genesis  Read  at  a  Hanging  —  Nookes  Hung  —  Blakely's 

Regrets  .....................................................  .  .   352 

CHAPTER  LI. 

The  Weekly  Occidental—  A  Ready  Editor—  A  Novel—  A  Concentration  of  Tal 
ent  —  The  Heroes  and  the  Heroines  —  The  Dissolute  Author  Engaged  —  Ex 
traordinary  Havoc  With  the  Novel  —  A  Highly  Romantic  Chapter  —  The 
Lovers  Separated  —  Jonah  Out-done  —  A  Lost  Poem  —  The  Aged  Pilot  Man 

—  Storm  On  the  Erie   Canal  —  Dollinger   the  Pilot  Man  —  Terrific  Gale  — 
Danger  Increases  —  A  Crisis  Arrived  —  Saved  as  if  by  a  Miracle  .........  360 

CHAPTER  LII. 

Freights  to  California  —  Silver  Bricks  —  Under  Ground  Mines  —  Timber  Supports 

—  A  Visit  to  the  Mines  —  The  Caved  Mines  —  Total  of  Shipments  in  1863.   376 

CHAPTER  LIII. 

Jim  Blaine  and  his  Grandfather's  Ram  —  Filkin's  Mistake  —  Old  Miss  Wagner 

V  and  her  Glass  Eye  —  Jacobs,  the  Coffin  Dealer  —  Waiting  for  a  Customer  — 

His  Bargain  With  Old  Robbins  —  Robbins  Sues   for  Damage  and  Collects 

—  A  New  Use  for  Missionaries  —  The  Effect  —  His  Uncle  Lem.  and  the  Use 
Providence  Made  of  Him  —  Sad  Fate  of  Wheeler  —  Devotion  of  His  Wife  — 

A  Model  Monument—  What  About  the  Ram  ?  .......................  382 

CHAPTER  LIV. 


in  Virginia  City—  Washing  Bills—  Habit  of  Imitation—  Chinese  Immi 
tion—A  Visit  to  Chinatown—  Messrs.  Ah  Sing,  Hong  Wo,  See  Yup,  &c. 


Chinese 

gration—A  Visit  to  Chinatown—  Messrs.  Ah  Sing,  Hong  Wo,  See  Yup,  &c.  39] 

CHAPTER  LV. 

Tired  of  Virginia  City  —  An  Old  Schoolmate  —  A  Two  Years'  Loan  —  Acting 
as  an  Editor  —  Almost  Receive  an  Offer  —  An  Accident  —  Three  Drunken 
Anecdotes—  Last  Look  at  Mt.  Davidson—  A  Beautiful  Incident  ......  398 

CHAPTER  LVI. 

Off  for  San  Francisco  —  Western  and  Eastern  Landscapes  —  The  Hottest  place 

on  Earth  —  Summer  and  Winter  ...................................  408 

CHAPTER  LVII. 

California  —  Novelty  of  Seeing  a  Woman—"  Well  if  it  ain't  a  Child  !"—  One 

Hundred  and  Fifty  Dollars  for  a  Kiss  —  Waiting  for  a  turn  ............  414 

CHAPTER  LVIII. 


Life  in  San  Francisco  —  Worthless  Stocks  —  My  First  Earthquake  —  Reporto- 
rial  Instincts  —  Effects  pf  the  Shocks  —  Incidents  and  Curiosities  —  Sabbath 
Breakers  —  The  Lodger  and  the  Chambermaid  —  A  Sensible  Fashion  to 
Follow  —  Effects  of  the  Earthquake  on  the  Ministers  ................. 


CONTENTS.  xvii 

CHAPTER  LIX. 

Poor  Again  —  Slinking  as  a  Business  —  A  Model  Collector  —  Misery  loves  Com 
pany  —  Comparing  Notes  .for  Comfort  —  A  Streak  of  Luck  —  Finding  a 
Dime  —  Wealthy  by  Comparison  —  Two  Sumptuous  Dinners  ............  428 

CHAPTER  LX. 

An  Old  Friend  —  An  Educated  Miner  —  Pocket  Mining  —  Freaks  of  Fortune.  .  .  43& 
CHAPTER  LXI. 

Dick  Baker  and  his  Cat  —  Tom  Quartz's  Peculiarities  —  On  an  Excursion  —  Ap 
pearance  On  His  Return  —  A  Prejudiced  Cat  —  Empty  Pockets  and  a  Ro 
ving  Life  ......................................................  439 

CHAPTER  LXII. 

Bound  for  the  Sandwich  Islands—  The  Three  Captains  —  The  Old  Admiral  —  His 
Daily  Habits  —  His  Well  Fought  Fields  —  An  Unexpected  Opponent  —  The 
Admiral  Overpowered  —  The  Victor  Declared  a  Hero  ..................  443 

CHAPTER  LXIII. 

Arrival  at  the  Islands  —  Honolulu  —  What  I  Saw  There  —  Dress  and  Habits  of 

the  Inhabitants  —  The  Animal  Kingdom  —  Fruits  and  Delightful  Effects.  .  454 

CHAPTER  LXIV. 

An  Excursion  —  Captain  Phillips  and  his  Turn-Out  —  A  Horseback  Ride  —  A 
Vicious  Animal  —  Xature  and  Art  —  Interesting  Ruins  —  All  Praise  to  the 
Missionaries  ...................................................  459 

CHAPTER  LXV. 

Interesting  Mementoes  and  Relics  —  An  Old  Legend  of  a  Frightful  Leap  —  An 
Appreciative  Horse  —  Horse  Jockeys  and  Their  Brothers  —  A  New  Trick 

—  A  Hay  Merchant  —  Good  Country  for  Horse  Lovers  ................  46? 

CHAPTER  LXVL 

A  Saturday  Afternoon  —  Sandwich  Island  Girls  on  a  Frolic  —  The  Poi  Merchant 

—  Grand  Gala   Day  —  A  Native   Dance  —  Church  Membership  —  Cats   and 
Officials  —  An  Overwhelming  Discovery  .............................   473 

CHAPTER  LXVII. 

The  Legislature  of  the  Island  —  What  Its  President  Has  Seen  —  Praying  for  aji^ 
Enemy  —  Women's  Rights  —  Romantic  Fashions  —  Worship  of  tln^ittxrrk—  -** 
Desire  for  Dress  —  Full  Dress  —  Not  Paris  Style  —  Playing  Empire  —  Officials- 
and  Foreign  Ambassadors  —  Overwhelming  Magnificence  ..............  480 

CHAPTER  LXVIII. 

A  RovaLFuneral  —  Order  of  Procession  —  Pomp  and    Ceremony  —  A   Striking 
v^nfifasra#1Srck  Monarch—  Human  Sacrifices  at  His  Death—  Burial  Orgies  400 

CHAPTER   LXIX. 

M  Once  more  upon  the  Waters."  —  A  Noisy  Passenger  —  Several  Silent  Ones  — 

A  Moonliht  Scene  —  Fruits  and  Plantations  .....................    .  .  498 


at 


xv 


CHAPTER    LXX. 


A  Droll  Character  —  Mrs.  Beazely  and  Her  Son—  Meditations  on  Turnips  — 
A  Letter  from  Horace  Greeley  —  An  Indignant  Rejoinder  —  The  Letter 
Translated  but  too  Late  ........................................  502 

CHAPTER  LXXI. 

Kealakekua  Bay  —  Death  of  Captain  Cook  —  His  Monument  —  Its  Construction 

—  On  Board  the  Schooner  ........................................   512 

CHAPTER  LXXIL 

Young  Kanakas  in  New  England  —  A  Temple  Built  by  Ghosts  —  Female  Bath 
ers  —  I  Stood  Guard  —  Women  and  Whiskey  —  A  Fight  for  Religion  —  Arri 
val  of  Missionaries  .....  '.  ........................................  517 

CHAPTER  LXXIII. 

Native  Canoes—  Surf  Bathing  —  A  Sanctuary  —  How  Built  —  The  Queen's  Rock 

—  Curiosities  —  Petrified  Lava  .....................................   524 

CHAPTER  LXXIV. 

Visit  to  the  Volcano  —  The  Crater  —  Pillar  of  Fire  —  Magnificent  Spectacle—  A 

Lake  of  Fire  ...............................................  .....   532 

CHAPTER  LXXV. 

The  North  Lake  —  Fountains  of  Fire  —  Streams  of  Burning  Lava  —  Tidal  Waves  538 
CHAPTER  LXXVI. 

A  Reminiscence  —  Another  Horse  Story—  My  Ride  with  the  Retired  Milk 
Horse  —  A  Picnicing  Excursion  —  Dead  Volcano  of  Holeakala  —  Compar 
ison  with  Vesuvius  —  An  Inside  View  ..............................  544 

CHAPTER  LXXVII. 

A  Curious  Character  —  A  Series  of  Stories  —  Sad  Fate  of  a  Liar  —  Evidence  of 

Insanity.  ...  .....................................................   551 

CHAPTER  LXXVIII. 

Return  to  San  Francisco  —  Ship  Amusements  —  Preparing  for  Lecturing  —  Val 
uable  Assistance  Secured—  My  First  Attempt  —  The  Audience  Carried— 
44  All's  Well  that  Ends  W<ell."  ....................................  553 

CHAPTER  LXXIX. 

Highwaymen  —  A  Predicament  —  A  Huge  Joke  —  Farewell  to  California  —  At 

Home  Again  —  Great  Changes.     Moral  .............................   564 

APPENDIX. 

^  —  Brief  Sketch  of  Mormon  History  ..................................  572 

B.  —  The  Mountain  Meadows  Massacre  .................................  576 

C.  —  Concerning  a  Frightful  Assassination  that  was  never  Consummated  ....  680 


OHAPTEE  I. 

MY  brother  had  just  been  appointed  Secretary  of  Nevada 
Territory  —  an  office  of  such  majesty  that  it  con 
centrated  in  itself  the  duties  and  dignities  of  Treasurer, 
Comptroller,  Secretary  of  State,  and  Acting  Governor  in  the 
Governor's  absence.  A  salary  of  eighteen  hundred  dollars  a 
year  and  the  title  of  "  Mr.  Secretary,"  gave  to  the  great  posi 
tion  an  air  of  wild  and  imposing  grandeur.  I  was  young  and 
ignorant,  and  I  envied  my  brother.  I  coveted  his  distinction 
and  his  financial  splendor,  but  particularly  and  especially  the 
long,  strange  journey  he  was  going  to  make,  and  the  curious 
new  world  he  was  going  to  explore.  He  w^as  going  to  travel ! 
I  never  had  been  away  from  home,  and  that  word  "  travel "  had 
a  seductive  charm  for  me.  Pretty  soon  he  would  be  hundreds 
and  hundreds  of  miles  away  on  the  great  plains  and  deserts, 
and  among  the  mountains  of  the  Far  West,  and  would  see  buffa- 
loes  and  Indians,  and  prairie  dogs,  and  antelopes,  and  have 
all  kinds  of  adventures,  and  may  be  get  hanged  or  scalped,  and 
have  ever  such  a  fine  time,  and  write  home  and  tell  us  all 
about  it,  and  be  a  hero.  And  he  would  see  the  gold  mines 
and  the  silver  mines,  and  maybe  go  about  of  an  afternoon 
when  his  work  was  done,  and  pick  up  two  or  three  pailfuls  of 
shining  slugs,  and  nuggets  of  gold  and  silver  on  the  hillside. 
And  by  and  by  he  would  become  very  rich,  and  return  home  by 
sea,  and  be  able  to  talk  as  calmly  about  San  Francisco  and  the 
ocean,  and  "  the  isthmus  "  as  if  it  was  nothing  of  any  conse 
quence  to  have  seen  those  marvels  face  to  tace.  What  I 
suffered  in  contemplating  his  happiness,  pen  cannot  describe. 
And  so,  when  he  offered  me,  in  cold  blood,  the  sublime  posi 
tion  of  private  secretary  under  him,  it  appeared  to  me  that 


20 


GETTING    READY. 


the  heavens  and  the  earth  passed  away,  and  the  firmament 
was  rolled  together  as  a  scroll !  I  had  nothing  more  to  desire. 
My  contentment  was  complete.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  or 


ENVIOUS  CONTEMPLATIONS. 


two  I  was  ready  for  the  journey.  Not  much  packing  up  was 
necessary,  because  we  were  going  in  the  overland  stage  from 
the  Missouri  frontier  to  Nevada,  and  passengers  were  only 
allowed  a  small  quantity  of  baggage  apiece.  There  was  no 
Pacific  railroad  in  those  fine  times  of  ten  or  twelve  years  ago — 
not  a  single  rail  of  it. 

I  only  proposed  to  stay  in  Nevada  three  months — I  had  no 
thought  of  staying  longer  than  that.  I  meant  to  see  all  I  could 
that  was  new  and  strange,  and  then  hurry  home  to  business.  I 
little  thought  that  I  would  not  see  the  end  df  that  three-month 
pleasure  excursion  for  six  or  seven  uncommonly  long  years  ! 

I  dreamed  all  night  about  Indians,  deserts,  and  silver  bars, 
and  in  due  time,  next  day,  we  took  shipping  at  the  St.  Louis 
wharf  on  board  a  steamboat  bound  up  the  Missouri  River. 


HERMAPHRODITE    STEAMER.  21 

We  were  six  days  going  from  St.  Louis  to  "  St.  Jo." — a 
trip  that  was  so  dull,  and  sleepy,  and  eventless  that  it  has  left 
no  more  impression  on  my  memory  than  if  its  duration  had 
been  six  minutes  instead  of  that  many  days.  No  record  is 
left  in  my  mind,  now,  concerning  it,  but  a  confused  jumble 
of  savage-looking  snags,  which  we  deliberately  walked  over 
with  one  wheel  or  the  other ;  and  of  reefs  which  we  butted 
and  butted,  and  then  retired  from  and  climbed  over  in  some 
softer  place ;  and  of  sand-bars  which  we  roosted  on  occasion 
ally,  and  rested,  and  then  got  out  our  crutches  and  sparred  over. 
In  fact,  the  boat  might  almost  as  well  have  gone  to  St.  Jo.  by 
land,  for  she  wras  walking  most  of  the  time,  anyhow — climbing 
over  reefs  and  clambering  over  snags  patiently  and  laboriously 


INNOCENT   DREJLMS. 


all  day  long.  The  captain  said  she  was  a  "  bully  "  boat,  and  all  she 
wanted  was  more  "  shear"  and  a  bigger  wheel.  I  thought  she 
wanted  a  pair  of  stilts,  but  I  had  the  deep  sagacity  not  to  say  so. 


CHAPTER  II. 

rTlHE  first  thing  we  did  on  that  glad  evening  that  landed 
-L     us  at  St.  Joseph  was  to  hunt  up  the  stage-office,  and  pay 
a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  apiece  for  tickets  per  overland 
coach  tot  Carson  City,  Nevada. 

The  next  morning,  bright  and  early,  we  took  a  hasty  break 
fast,  and  hurried  to  the  starting-place.  Then  an  inconvenience 
presented  itself  which  we  had  not  properly  appreciated  before, 
namely,  that  one  cannot  make  a  heavy  traveling  trunk  stand 
for  twenty-five  pounds  of  baggage — because  it  weighs  a  good 
deal  more.  But  that  was  all  we  could  take — twenty-five 
pounds  each.  So  we  had  to  snatch  our  trunks  open,  and 
make  a  selection  in  a  good  deal  of  a  hurry.  ~W&  put  our 
lawful  twenty -five  pounds  apiece  all  in  one  valise,  and  shipped 
the  trunks  back  to  St.  Louis  again.  It  was  a  sad  parting,  for 
now  we  had  no  swallow-tail  coats  and  white  kid  gloves  to  wear 
at  Pawnee  receptions  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  no  stove 
pipe  hats  nor  patent-leather  boots,  nor  anything  else  necessary 
to  make  life  calm  and  peaceful.  We  were  reduced  to  a  war- 
footing.  Each  of  us  put  on  a  rough,  heavy  suit  of  clothing, 
woolen  army  shirt  and  " stogy"  boots  included  ;  and  into  the 
valise  we  crowded  a  few  white  shirts,  some  under-clothing 
and  such  things.  My  brother,  the  Secretary,  took  along  about 
four  pounds  of  United  States  statutes  and  six  pounds  of 
Unabridged  Dictionary;  for  we  did  not  know — poor  inno 
cents — that  such  things  could  be  bought  in  San  Francisco  on 
one  day  and  received  in  Carson  City  the  next.  I  was  armed 


FORMIDABLE    ARMAMENT. 


23 


to  the  teeth  with  a  pitiful  little  Smith  &  Wesson's  seven- 
shooter,  which  carried  a  ball  like  a  homoeopathic  pill,  and  it 
took  the  whole  seven  to  make  a  dose  for  an  adult.  But  I 
thought  it  was  grand.  It  ap 
peared  to  me  to  be  a  dangerous 
weapon.  It  only  had  one  fault— 
you  could  not  hit  anything  with 
it.  One  of  our  "  conductors  " 
practiced  awhile  on  a  cow  with 
it,  and  as  long  as  she  stood  still 
and  behaved  herself  she  was  safe ; 
but  as  soon  as  she  went  to  mov 
ing  about,  and  he  got  to  shooting 
at  other  things,  she  came  to  grief. 
The  Secretary  had  a  small-sized 
Colt's  revolver  strapped  around 
him  for  protection  against  the 
Indians,  and  to  guard  against 
accidents  he  carried  it  uncapped. 
Mr.  George  Bemis  was  dismally 

formidable.  George  Bemis  was  our  fellow-traveler.  We  had 
never  seen  him  before.  He  wore  in  his  belt  an  old  original 
"Allen  "  revolver,  such  as  irreverent  people  called  a  "  pepper 
box."  Simply  drawing  the  trigger  back,  cocked  and  fired  the 
pistol.  As  the  trigger  came  back,  the  hammer  would  begin  to 
rise  and  the  barrel  to  turn  over, 
and  presently  down  would  drop 
the  hammer,  and  away  would 
speed  the  ball.  To  aim  along 
the  turning  barrel  and  hit  the 


thing  aimed  at  was  a  feat  which 

was  probably  never  done  with 

an  "Allen"  in  the  world.     But  THE  "ALLEN." 

George's  was  a  reliable  weapon, 

nevertheless,  because,  as  one  of  the   stage-drivers   afterward 

said,  "  If  she  didn't  get  what  she  went  after,  she  would  fetch 

something  else."    And  so  she  did.    She  went  after  a  deuce  of 


LIGHT   TRAVELING  ORDER. 


24  LUXURIES    AND    NECESSARIES. 

spades  nailed  against  a  tree,  once,  and  fetched  a  mule  standing 
about  thirty  yards  to  the  left  of  it.  Bemis  did  not  want  the 
mule ;  but  the  owner  came  out  with  a  double-barreled  shot 
gun  and  persuaded  him  to  buy  it,  anyhow.  It  was  a  cheerful 


INDUCEMENTS   TO  PUKCHASE. 


weapon — the  "Allen."  Sometimes  all  its  six  barrels  would 
go  off  at  once,  and  then  there  was  no  safe  place  in  all  the 
region  round  about,  but  behind  it. 

We  took  two  or  three  blankets  for  protection  against  frosty 
weather  in  the  mountains.  In  the  matter  of  luxuries  we  were 
modest — we  took  none  along  but  some  pipes  and  five  pounds 
of  smoking  tobacco.  "We  had  two  large  canteens  to  carry 
water  in,  between  stations  on  the  Plains,  and  we  also  took  with, 
us  a  little  shot-bag  of  silver  coin  for  daily  expenses  in  the  way 
of  breakfasts  and  dinners. 


OUR    COACH 


25 


By  eight  o'clock  everything  was  ready,  and  we  were  on  the 
other  side  of  the  river.  /We  jumped  into  the  stage,  the  driver 
cracked  his  whip,  and  we  bowled  away  and  left  "  the  States  " 
behind  us.  It  was  a  superb  summer  morning,  and  all  the 
landscape  was  brilliant  with  sunshine.  There  was  a  freshness 
and  breeziness,  too,  and  an  exhilarating  sense  of  emancipation 
from  all  sorts  of  cares  and  responsibilities,  that  almost  made 
us  feel  that  the  years  we  had  spent  in  the  close,  hot  city,  toil 
ing  and  slaving,  had  been  wasted  and  thrown  away.  We 
were  spinning  along  through  Kansas,  and  in  the  course  of  an 
hour  and  a  half  we  were  fairly  abroad  on  the  great  Plains. 
Just  here  the  land  was  rolling — a  grand  sweep  of  regular 
elevations  and  depressions  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach — like 
the  stately  heave  and  swell  of  the  ocean's  bosom  after  a  storm. 
And  everywhere  were  cornfields,  accenting  with  squares  of 
deeper  green,  this  limitless  expanse  of  grassy  land.  But 
presently  this  sea  upon  dry  ground  was  to  lose  its  "  rolling " 
character  and  stretch  away  for  seven  hundred  miles  as  level  as 
a  floor ! 

/Our  coach  was  a  great  swinging  and  swaying  stage,  of  the 
most  sumptuous  description 
— an  imposing  cradle  on 
wheels.  It  was  drawn  by 
six  handsome  horses,  and 
by  the  side  of  the  driver 
sat  the  "conductor,"  the 
legitimate  captain  of  the 
craft ;  for  it  was  his  busi 
ness  to  take  charge  and 
care  of  the  mails,  baggage, 
express  matter,  and  passen 
gers.  We  three  were  the 
only  passengers,  this  trip. 
We  sat  on  the  back  seat, 
inside.  About  all  the  rest  of  the  coach  was  full  of  mail 
bags — for  we  had  three  days'  delayed  mails  with  us.  Almost 
touching  our  knees,  a  perpendicular  wall  of  mail  matter  rose  up 


THE  FACETIOUS  DRIVER. 


A   NEW   POST   OFFICE 


to  the  roof.  There  was  a  great  pile  of  it  strapped  on  top  of 
the  stage,  and  both  the  fore  and  hind  boots  were  full.  We 
had  twenty-seven  hundred  pounds  of  it  aboard,  the  driver 


PLEASING  NEWS. 


eaid — "  a  little  for  Erigham,  and  Carson,  and  'Frisco,  but  the 
heft  of  it  for  the  Injuns,  which  is  powerful  troublesome 
'thout  they  get  plenty  of  truck  to  read."  But  as  he  just  then 
got  up  a  fearful  convulsion  of  his  countenance  which  was  sug 
gestive  of  a  wink  being  swallowed  by  an  earthquake,  we 
guessed  that  his  remark  was  intended  to  be  facetious,  and  to 
mean  that  we  would  unload  the  most  of  our  mail  matter 
somewhere  on  the  Plains  and  leave  it  to  the  Indians,  or 
whosoever  wanted  it. 

We  changed  horses  every  ten  miles,  all  day  long,  and  fairly 
flew  over  the  hard,  level  road.  We  jumped  out  and  stretched 
our  legs  every  time  the  coach  stopped,  and  so  the  night  found 
us  still  vivacious  and  unfatigued. 

After  supper  a  woman  got  in,  who  lived  about  fifty  miles 


A    MODERN    SPHTNX. 


further  on,  and  we  three  had  to  take  turns  at  sitting  outside 
with  the  driver  and  conductor.  Apparently  she  was  not  a 
talkative  woman.  She  would  sit  there  in  the  gathering  twi 
light  and  fasten  her  steadfast  eyes  on  a  mosquito  rooting  into 
her  arm,  and  slowly  she  would  raise  her  other  hand  till  she 
had  got  his  range,  and  then  she  would  launch  a  slap  at  him 
that  would  have  jolted  a  cow;  and  after  that  she  would  sit  and 
contemplate  the  corpse  with  tranquil  satisfaction — for  she 
never  missed  her  mosquito ;  she  was  a  dead  shot  at  short  range. 
She  never  removed  a  carcase,  but  left  them  there  for  bait.  I 
sat  by  this  grim  Sphynx  and  watched  her  kill  thirty  or  forty 
mosquitoes — watched  her,  and  waited  for  her  to  say  something, 
but  she  never  did.  So  I  finally  opened  the  conversation  my 
self.  I  said : 

"  The  mosquitoes  are  pretty  bad,  about  here,  madam." 

"  You  bet !  " 

"  What  did  I  understand  you  to  say,  madam  ? " 

"  You  BET  !  " 

Then  she  cheered  up,  and  faced  around  and  said : 

"  Danged  if  I  didn't  begin  to  think  you  fellers  was  deef 
and  dumb.  I  did,  b'  gosh. 
Here  I've  sot,  and  sot,  and 
sot,  a-bust'n  muskeeters  and 
wonderin'  what  was  ailin' 
ye.  Fust  I  thot  you  was 
deef  and  dumb,  then  I  thot 
you  was  sick  or  crazy,  or 
suthin',  and  then  by  and  by 
I  begin  to  reckon  you  was 
a  passcl  of  sickly  fools  that 
couldn't  think  of  nothing 

O 

to  say.      Wher'd  ye  come 
from?" 

The  Sphynx  was  a 
Sphynx  no  more  !  The  fountains  of  her  great  deep  were 
broken  up,  and  she  rained  the  nine  parts  of  speech  forty  days 
and  forty  nights,  metaphorically  speaking,  and  buried  us  under 


THE    SPHYNX. 


28  A    SOCIABLE    HEIFER. 

a  desolating  deluge  of  trivial  gossip  that  left  not  a  crag  or  pin 
nacle  of  rejoinder  projecting  above  the  tossing  waste  of  dislo 
cated  grammar  and  decomposed  pronunciation ! 

How  we  suffered,  suffered,  suffered !  She  went  on,  hour 
after  hour,  till  I  was  sorry  I  ever  opened  the  mosquito  ques 
tion  and  gave  her  a  start.  She  never  did  stop  again  until  she 
got  to  her  journey's  end  toward  daylight ;  and  then  she  stirred 
us  up  as  she  was  leaving  the  stage  (for  we  were  nodding,  by 
that  time),  and  said : 

"  Now  you  git  out  at  Cotton  wood,  you  fellers,  and  lay  over 
a  couple  o'  days,  and  I'll  be  along  some  time  to-night,  and  if 
I  can  do  ye  any  good  by  edgin'  in  a  wrord  now  and  then,  I'm 
right  tliar.  Folks  '11  tell  you  't  I've  always  ben  kind  o'  offish 
and  partic'lar  for  a  gal  that's  raised  in  the  woods,  and  I  am, 
with  the  rag-tag  and  bob-tail,  and  a  gal  has  to  be,  if  she  wants 
to  be  anything,  but  when  people  comes  along  which  is  my 
equals,  I  reckon  I'm  a  pretty  sociable  heifer  after  all," 

We  resolved  not  to  "  lay  by  at  Cottonwood." 


CHAPTEE   III. 

ABOUT  an  hour  and  a  half  before  daylight  we  were  bowl 
ing  along  smoothly  over  the  road — so  smoothly  that 
our  cradle  only  rocked  in  a  gentle,  lulling  way,  that  was  grad 
ually  soothing  us  to  sleep,  and  dulling  our  consciousness — 
when  something  gave  away  under  us !  We  were  dimly  aware 
of  it,  but  indifferent  to  it.  The  coach  stopped.  We  heard 
the  driver  and  conductor  talking  together  outside,  and  rum 
maging  for  a  lantern,  and  swearing  because  they  could  not 
find  it — but  we  had  no  interest  in  whatever  had  happened, 
and  it  only  added  to  our  comfort  to  think  of  those  people 
out  there  at  work  in  the  murky  night,  and  we  snug  in  our 
nest  with  the  curtains  drawn.  But  presently,  by  the  sounds, 
there  seemed  to  be  an  examination  going  on,  and  then  the 
driver's  voice  said : 

"  By  George,  the  thoroughbrace  is  broke ! " 
This  startled  me  broad  awake — as  an  undefined  sense  of 
calamity  is  always  apt  to  do.  I  said  to  myself:  "Now,  a 
thoronghbrace  is  probably  part  of  a  horse ;  and  doubtless  a 
vital  part,  too,  from  the  dismay  in  the  driver's  voice.  Leg, 
maybe — and  yet  how  could  he  break  his  leg  waltzing  along 
such  a  road  as  this  ?  No,  it  can't  be  his  leg.  That  is  impos 
sible,  unless  he  was  reaching  for  the  driver.  Now,  what  can 
be  the  thoroughbrace  of  a  horse,  I  wonder  ?  Well,  whatever 
comes,  I  shall  not  air  my  ignorance  in  this  crowd,  anyway." 
Just  then  the  conductor's  face  appeared  at  a  lifted  curtain, 


30  ABANDONING    THE    MAIL-BAGS. 

and  his  lantern  glared  in  on  us  and  our  wall  of  mail  matter. 
He  said : 

"  Gents,  you'll  have  to  turn  out  a  spell.  Thoroughbrace  is 
broke." 

We  climbed  out  into  a  chill  drizzle,  and  felt  ever  so  home 
less  and  dreary.  When  I  found  that  the  thing  they  called  a 
"  thoroughbrace "  was  the  massive  combination  of  belts  and 
springs  which  the  coach  rocks  itself  in,  I  said  to  the  driver : 

"  I  never  saw  a  thoroughbrace  used  up  like  that,  before, 
that  I  can  remember.  How  did  it  happen  ? " 

"Why,  it  happened  by  trying  to  make  one  coach  carry 
three  days'  mail — that's  how  it  happened,"  said  he.  "  And 
right  here  is  the  very  direction  which  is  wrote  on  all  the 
newspaper-bags  which  was  to  be  put  out  for  the  Injuns  for  to 
keep  'em  quiet.  It's  most  uncommon  lucky,  becuz  it's  so 
nation  dark  I  should  'a'  gone  by  unbeknowns  if  that  air 
thoroughbrace  hadn't  broke." 

I  knew  that  he  was  in  labor  with  another  of  those  winks 
of  his,  though  I  could  not  see  his  face,  because  he  was  bent 
down  at  work ;  and  wishing  him  a  safe  delivery,  I  turned  to 
and  helped  the  rest  get  out  the  mail-sacks.  It  made  a  great 
pyramid  by  the  roadside  when  it  was  all  out.  When  they  had 
mended  the  thoroughbrace  we  filled  the  two  boots  again,  but 
put  no  mail  on  top,  and  only  half  as  much  inside  as  there  was 
before.  The  conductor  bent  all  the  seat-backs  down,  and  then 
filled  the  coach  just  half  full  of  mail-bags  from  end  to  end. 
We  objected  loudly  to  this,  for  it  left  us  no  seats.  But  the 
conductor  was  wiser  than  we,  and  said  a  bed  was  better  than 
seats,  and  moreover,  this  plan  would  protect  his  thoroughbraces. 
We  never  wanted  any  seats  after  that.  The  lazy  bed  was  infi 
nitely  preferable.  I  had  many  an  exciting  day,  subsequently, 
lying  on  it  reading  the  statutes  and  the  dictionary,  and  won 
dering  how  the  characters  would  turn  out. 

The  conductor  said  he  would  send  back  a  guard  from  the 
next  station  to  take  charge  of  the  abandoned  mail-bags,  and 
we  drove  on. 

It  was  now  just  dawn ;  and  as  we  stretched  our  cramped 


SLEEPING    UNDER    DIFFICULTIES.  31 

legs  full  length  on  the  mail  sacks,  and  gazed  out  through  the 
windows  across  the  wide  wastes  of  greensward  clad  in  cool, 
powdery  mist,  to  where  there  was  an  expectant  look  in  the 
eastern  horizon,  our  perfect  enjoyment  took  the  form  of  a 
tranquil  and  contented  ecstasy.  The  stage  whirled  along  at  a 
spanking  gait,  the  breeze  flapping  curtains  and  suspended 
coats  in  a  most  exhilarating  way ;  the  cradle  swayed  and  swung 
luxuriously,  the  pattering  of  the  horses'  hoofs,  the  cracking 
of  the  driver's  whip,  and  his"Hi-yi!  g'lang!"  were  music; 
the  spinning  ground  and  the  waltzing  trees  appeared  to  give 
us  a  mute  hurrah  as  we  went  by,  and  then  slack  up  and  look 
after  us  with  interest,  or  envy,  or  something ;  and  as  we  lay 
and  smoked  the  pipe  of  peace  and  compared  all  this  luxury 
with  the  years  of  tiresome  city  life  that  had  gone  before  it,  we 
felt  that  there  was  only  one  complete  and  satisfying  happiness 
in  the  world,  and  we  had  found  it. 

After  breakfast,  at  some  station  whose  name  I  have  forgot 
ten,  we  three  climbed  up  on  the  seat  behind  the  driver,  and 
let  the  conductor  have  our  bed  for  a  nap.  And  by  and  by, 
when  the  sun  made  me  drowsy,  I  lay  down  on  my  face  on  top 
of  the  coach,  grasping  the  slender  iron  railing,  and  slept  for 
an  hour  or  more.  That  will  give  one  an  appreciable  idea  of 
those  matchless  roads.  Instinct  will  make  a  sleeping  man  grip 
a  fast  hold  of  the  railing  when  the  stage  jolts,  but  when  it  only 
swings  and  sways,  no  grip  is  necessary.  Overland  drivers  and 
conductors  used  to  sit  in  their  places  and  sleep  thirty  or  forty 
minutes  at  a  time,  on  good  roads,  while  spinning  along  at  the 
rate  of  eight  or  ten  miles  an  hour.  I  saw  them  do  it,  often. 
There  was  no  danger  about  it ;  a  sleeping  man  will  seize  the 
irons  in  time  when  the  coach  jolts.  These  men  were  hard 
worked,  and  it  was  not  possible  for  them  to  stay  awake  all  the 
time. 

By  and  by  we  passed  through  Marysville,  and  over  the 
Big  Blue  and  Little  Sandy ;  thence  about  a  mile,  and  entered 
Nebraska.  About  a  mile  further  on,  we  came  to  the  Big 
Sandy — one  hundred  and  eighty  miles  from  St.  Joseph. 

As  the  sun  was  going  down,  we  saw  the  first  specimen  of 


A    LONG-EARED    ANIMAL. 


an  animal  known  familiarly  over  two  thousand  miles  of  moun 
tain  and  desert — from  Kansas  clear  to  the  Pacific  Ocean — as 
the  "jackass  rabbit."  He  is  well  named.  He  is  just  like  any 
other  rabbit,  except  that  he  is  from  one  third  to  twice  as  large, 
has  longer  legs  in  proportion  to  his  size,  and  has  the  most  pre 
posterous  ears  that  ever  were  mounted  on  any  creature  but  a 
jackass.  When  he  is  sitting  quiet,  thinking  about  his  sins,  or 
is  absent-minded  or  unapprehensive  of  danger,  his  majestic 

ears  project  above  him  con 
spicuously;  but  the  break 
ing  of  a  twig  will  scare 
him  nearly  to  death,  and 
then  he  tilts  his  ears  back 
gently  and  starts  for  home. 
All  you  can  see,  then,  for 
the  next  minute,  is  his  Ions: 

o 

gray  form  stretched  out 
straight  and  "  streaking  it " 
through  the  low  sage-brush, 
head  erect,  eyes  right,  and 
ears  just  canted  a  little  to 
the  rear,  but  showing  you 
where  the  animal  is,  all  the 
time,  the  same  as  if  he  carried  a  jib.  Now  and  then  he  makes 
a  marvelous  spring  with  his  long  legs,  high  over  the  stunted 
sage-brush,  and  scores  a  leap  that  would  make  a  horse  envious. 
Presently  he  comes  down  to  a  long,  graceful  "lope,"  and 
shortly  he  mysteriously  disappears.  He  has  crouched  behind 
a  sage-bush,  and  will  sit  there  and  listen  and  tremble  until  you 
get  within  six  feet  of  him,  when  he  will  get  under  way  again. 
But  one  must  shoot  at  this  creature  once,  if  he  wishes  to  see 
him  throw  his  heart  into  his  heels,  and  do  the  best  he  knows 
how.  He  is  frightened  clear  through,  now,  and  he  lays  his 
long  ears  down  on  his  back,  straightens  himself  out  like  a 
yard-stick  every  spring  he  makes,  and  scatters  miles  behind 
him  with  an  easy  indifference  that  is  enchanting. 

Our  party  made  this  specimen  "hump  himself,"  as   the 


MEDITATION. 


Long 


after 


AN     OLD    ACQUAINTANCE    MODERNIZED.  3^ 

fjonductor  said.  The  secretary  started  him  with  a  shot  from 
the  Colt ;  I  commenced  spitting  at  him  with  my  weapon  ;  and 
all  in  the  same  instant  the  old  "  Allen's  "  whole  broadside  let 
go  with  a  rat 
tling  crash,  and 
it  is  not  put 
ting  it  too 
strong  to  say 
that  the  rabbit 
was  frantic! 
He  dropped  his 
ears,  set  up  his 
tail,  and  left  for 
San  Francisco 
at  a  speed  which 

can  only  be  described  as  a  flash  and  a  vanish ! 
lie  was  out  of  sight  we  could  hear  him  whiz. 

I  do  not  remember  where  we  first  came  across  "  sage 
brush,"  but  as  I  have  been  speaking  of  it  I  may  as  well  describe 
it.  This  is  easily  done,  for  if  the  reader  can  imagine  a  gnarled 

, and  venerable  live  oak-tree 

reduced  to  a  little  shrub 
two  feet  high,  with  its  rough 
bark,  its  foliage,  its  twisted 
boughs,  all  complete,  he  can 
picture  the  "  sage-brush  " 
exactly.  Often,  on  lazy  af 
ternoons  in  the  mountains, 
I  have  lain  on  the  ground 
with  my  face  under  a  sage- 
bush,  and  entertained  my 
self  with  fancying  that  the 
gnats  among  its  foliage  were 
liliputian  birds,  and  that 
the/  ants  marching  and  countermarching  about  its  base  were 
liliputian  flocks  and  herds,  and  myself  some  vast  loafer  from 
Crobdignag  waiting  to  catch  a  little  citizen  and  eat  him. 

It  is  an  imposing  monarch  of  the  forest  in  exquisite  rninia» 
3t 


AUTHOR    AS    GULLIVER. 


l\ 


34:  THE    EMIGRANT'S    FRIEND. 

ture,  is  the  "  sage-brush."  Its  foliage  is  a  grayish  green,  and 
gives  that  tint  to  desert  and  mountain.  It  smells  like  our  do 
mestic  sage,  and  "  sage-tea  "  made  from  it  tastes  like  the  sage- 
tea  which  all  boys  are  so  well  acquainted  with.  The  sage 
brush  is  a  singularly  hardy  plant,  and  grows  right  in  the  midst 
of  deep  sand,  and  among  barren  rocks,  where  nothing  else  in 
the  vegetable  world  would  try  to  grow,  except  "bunch- 
grass."  *  The  sage-bushes  grow  from  three  to  six  or  seven 
feet  apart,  all  over  the  mountains  and  deserts  of  the  Far  West, 
clear  to  the  borders  of  California.  There  is  not  a  tree  of  any 
kind  in  the  deserts,  for  hundreds  of  miles — there  is  no  vegeta 
tion  at  all  in  a  regular  desert,  except  the  sage-brush  and  its 
cousin  the  "  greasewood,"  which  is  so  much  like  the  sage 
brush  that  the  difference  amounts  to  little.  Camp-fires  and 
hot  suppers  in  the  deserts  would  be  impossible  but  for  the 
friendly  sage-brush.  Its  trunk  is  as  large  as  a  boy's  wrist  (and 
from  that  up  to  a  man's  arm),  and  its  crooked  branches  are 
half  as  large  as  its  trunk — all  good,  sound,  hard  wood,  very 
like  oak. 

When  a  party  camps,  the  first  thing  to  be  done  is  to  cut 
sage-brush ;  and  in  a  few  minutes  there  is  an  opulent  pile  of 
it  ready  for  use.  A  hole  a  foot  wide,  two  feet  deep,  and  two 
feet  long,  is  dug,  and  sage-brush  chopped  up  and  burned  in  it 
till  it  is  full  to  the  brim  with  glowing  coals.  Then  the  cooking 
begins,  and  there  is  no  smoke,  and  consequently  no  swearing. 
Such  a  fire  will  keep  all  night,  with  very  little  replenishing ; 
and  it  makes  a  very  sociable  camp-fire,  and  one  around  which 
the  most  impossible  reminiscences  sound  plausible,  instructive, 
and  profoundly  entertaining. 

Sage-brash  is  very  fair  fuel,  but  as  a  vegetable  it  is  a  dis 
tinguished  failure.  Nothing  can  abide  the  taste  of  it  but  the 

* "  Bunch-grass "  grows  on  the  bleak  mountain-sides  of  Nevada  and 
neighboring  territories,  and  offers  excellent  feed  for  stock,  even  in  the  dead 
of  winter,  wherever  the  snow  is  blown  aside  and  exposes  it ;  notwithstand 
ing  its  unpromising  home,  bunch-grass  is  a  better  and  more  nutritious  diet 
for  cattle  and  horses  than  almost  any  other  hay  or  grass  that  is  known^-so 
stock-men  say. 


A    NEW    ARTICLE    OF    DIET. 


35 


jackass  and  his  illegitimate  child  the  mule.  But  their  testi 
mony  to  its  nutritiousness  is  worth  nothing,  for  they  will  eat 
pine  knots,  or  anthracite  coal,  or  brass  filings,  or  lead  pipe,  or 
old  bottles,  or  anything  that  comes  handy,  and  then  go  off 
looking  as  grateful  as  if  they  had  had  oysters  for  dinner.  Mules 
and  donkeys  and  camels  have  appetites  that  anything  will 
relieve  temporarily,  but  nothing  satisfy.  In  Syria,  once,  at 
the  head- waters  of  the  Jordan,  a  camel  took  charge  of  my 
overcoat  while  the  tents  were  being  pitched,  and  examined  it 
with  a  critical  eye,  all  over,  with  as  much  interest  as  if  he  had 
an  idea  of  getting  one  made  like  it ;  and  then,  after  he  was 


touciH  statement. 


done  figuring  on  it  as  an  article  of  apparel,  he  began  to  con 
template  it  as  an  article  of  diet.     He  put  his  foot  on  it,  and 


36  "TOO    TOUGH    FOR    A    CAMEL." 

lifted  one  of  the  sleeves  out  with  his  teeth,  and  chewed  and 
chewed  at  it,  gradually  taking  it  in,  and  all  the  while  opening 
and  closing  his  eyes  in  a  kind  of  religious  ecstasy,  as  if  he  had 
never  tasted  anything  as  good  as  an  overcoat  before,  in  his  life. 
Then  he  smacked  his  lips  once  or  twice,  and  reached  after  the 
other  sleeve.  Next  he  tried  the  velvet  collar,  and  smiled  a 
smile  of  such  contentment  that  it  was  plain  to  see  that  he 
regarded  that  as  the  daintiest  thing  about  an  overcoat.  The 
tails  went  next,  along  with  some  percussion  caps  and  cough 
candy,  and  some  fig-paste  from  Constantinople.  And  then  my 
newspaper  correspondence  dropped  out,  and  he  took  a  chance 
in  that — manuscript  letters  written  for  the  home  papers.  But 
he  was  treading  on  dangerous  ground,  now.  He  began  to 
come  across  solid  wisdom  in  those  documents  that  was  rather 
weighty  on  his  stomach ;  and  occasionally  he  would  take  a 
joke  that  would  shake  him  up  till  it  loosened  his  teeth  ;  it  was 
getting  to  be  perilous  times  with  him,  but  he  held  his  grip 
with  good  courage  and  hopefully,  till  at  last  he  began  to  stum 
ble  on  statements  that  not  even  a  camel  could  swallow  with 
impunity.  He  began  to  gag  and  gasp,  and  his  eyes  to  stand 
out,  and  his  forelegs  to  spread,  and  in  about  a  quarter  of  a  min 
ute  he  fell  over  as  stiff  as  a  carpenter's  work-bench,  and  died  a 
death  of  indescribable  agony.  I  went  and  pulled  the  manu 
script  out  of  his  mouth,  and  found  that  the  sensitive  creature 
had  choked  to  death  on  one  of  the  mildest  and  gentlest  state 
ments  of  fact  that  I  ever  laid  before  a  trusting  public. 

I  was  about  to  say,  when  diverted  from  my  subject,  that 
occasionally  one  finds  sage-bushes  five  or  six  feet  high,  and 
with  a  spread  of  branch  and  foliage  in  proportion,  but  two  or 
two  and  a  half  feet  is  the  usual  height. 


OHAPTEE    IV- 

AS  the  sun  went  down  and  the  evening  chill  came  on,  we 
made  preparation  for  bed.  We  stirred  up  the  hard 
leather  letter-sacks,  and  the  knotty  canvas  bags  of  printed 
matter  (knotty  and  uneven  because  of  projecting  ends  and 
corners  of  magazines,  boxes  and  books).  We  stirred  them  up 
and  redisposed  them  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  our  bed  as  level 
as  possible.  And  we  did  improve  it,  too,  though  after  all  OUT 
work  it  had  an  upheaved  and  billowy  look  about  it,  like  a  littlo 
piece  of  a  stormy  sea.  Next  we  hunted  up  our  boots  from 
odd  nooks  among  the  mail-bags  where  they  had  settled,  and 
put  them  on.  Then  we  got  down  our  coats,  vests,  pantaloons 
and  heavy  woolen  shirts,  from  the  arm-loops  where  they  had 
been  swinging  all  day,  and  clothed  ourselves  in  them — for, 
there  being  no  ladies  either  at  the  stations  or  in  the  coach,  and 
the  weather  being  hot,  we  had  looked  to  our  comfort  by  strip, 
ping  to  our  underclothing,  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning. 
All  things  being  now  ready,  we  stowed  the  uneasy  Dictionary 
where  it  would  lie  as  quiet  as  possible,  and  placed  the  water- 
canteens  and  pistols  where  we  could  find  them  in  the  dark. 
Then  we  smoked  a  final  pipe,  and  swapped  a  final  yarn ;  after 
which,  we  put  the  pipes,  tobacco  and  bag  of  coin  in  snug  holes 
and  caves  among  the  mail-bags,  and  then  fastened  down  the 
coach  curtains  all  around,  and  made  the  place  as  "  dark  as  the 
inside  of  a  cow,"  as  the  conductor  phrased  it  in  his  pictur 
esque  way.  It  was  certainly  as  dark  as  any  place  could  be — 
nothing  was  even  dimly  visible  in  it.  And  finally,  we  rolled 


38  NIGHT    TRAVELING. 

ourselves  np  like  silk-worms,  each  person  in  liis  own  blanket, 
and  sank  peacefully  to  sleep. 

Whenever  the  stage  stopped  to  change  horses,  we  would 
wake  up,  and  try  to,  recollect  where  we  were — and  succeed — • 
and  in  a  minute  or  two  the  stage  would  be  off  again,  and  we 
likewise.  We  began  to  get  into  country,  now,  threaded 
here  and  there  /with  little  streams.  These  had  high,  steep 
banks  on  each  side,  and  every  time  we  flew  down  one  bank 
and  scrambled  up  the  other,  our  party  inside  got  mixed  some 
what.  First  we  would  all  be  down  in  a  pile  at  the  forward 


THIRD   TRIP   OF   THE   UNABRIDGED. 

end  of  the  stage,  nearly  in  a  sitting  posture,  and  in  a  second 
we  would  shoot  to  the  other  end,  and  stand  on  our  heads.  And 
we  would  sprawl  and  kick,  too,  and  ward  off  ends  and  corners 
of  mail-bags  that  came  lumbering  over  us  and  about  us ;  and 
as  the  dust  rose  from  the  tumult,  we  would  all  sneeze  in  chorus, 
and  the  majority  of  us  would  grumble,  and  probably  say  some 
hasty  thing,  like  :  "  Take  your  elbow  out  of  my  ribs ! — can't 
you  quit  crowding  ? " 

Every  time  we  avalanched  from  one  end  of  the  stage  to  the 
other,  the  Unabridged  Dictionary  would  come  too ;  and  every 


AT    THE    STATION.  39 

time  it  came  it  damaged  somebody.  One  trip  it  "  barked " 
the  Secretary's  elbow ;  the  next  trip  it  hurt  me  in  the  stomach, 
and  the  third  it  tilted  Bemis's  nose  up  till  he  could  look  down 
his  nostrils — he  said.  The  pistols  and  coin  soon  settled  to  the 
bottom,  but  the  pipes,  pipe-stems,  tobacco  and  canteens  clattered 
and  floundered  after  the  Dictionary  every  time  it  made  an  as 
sault  on  us,  and  aided  and  abetted  the  book  by  spilling  tobacco 
in  our  eyes,  and  water  down  our  backs. 

Still,  all  things  considered,  it  was  a  very  comfortable  night. 
It  wore  gradually  away,  and  when  at  last  a  cold  gray  light  was 
visible  through  the  puckers  and  chinks  in  the  curtains,  we. 
yawned  and  stretched  with  satisfaction,  shed  our  cocoons,  and 
felt  that  we  had  slept  as  much  as  was  necessary.  By  and  by, 
as  the  sun  rose  up  and  warmed  the  world,  we  pulled  off  our 
clothes  and  got  ready  for  breakfast.  We  were  just  pleasantly 
In  time,  for  five  minutes  afterward  the  driver  sent  the  weird 
music  of  his  bugle  winding  over  the  grassy  solitudes,  and 
presently  we  detected  a  low  hut  or  two  in  the  distance.  Then 
the  rattling  of  the  coach,  the  clatter  of  our  six  horses'  hoofs, 
and  the  driver's  crisp  commands,  awoke  to  a  louder  and  stronger 
emphasis,  and  we  went  sweeping  down  on  the  station  at  our 
smartest  speed.  It  w^as  fascinating — that  old  overland  stage- 
coaching. 

We  jumped  out  in  undress  uniform.  The  driver  tossed  his 
gathered  reins  out  on  the  ground,  gaped  and  stretched  com 
placently,  drew  off  his  heavy  buckskin  gloves  with  great  deliber 
ation  and  insufferable  dignity — taking  not  the  slightest  notice 
of  a  dozen  solicitous  inquiries  after  his  health,  and  humbly  face 
tious  and  nattering  accostings,  and  obsequious  tenders  of  service, 
from  five  or  six  hairy  and  half-civilized  station-keepers  and 
hostlers  who  were  nimbly  unhitching  our  steeds  and  bringing 
the  fresh  team  out  of  the  stables — for  in  the  eyes  of  the  stage- 
driver  of  that  day,  station-keepers  and  hostlers  were  a  sort  of 
good  enough  low  creatures,  useful  in  their  place,  and  helping 
to  make  up  a.  world,  but  not  the  kind  of  beings  which  a  person 
of  distinction  could  afford  to  concern  himself  with ;  while,  on 
the  contrary,  in  the  eyes  of  the  station-keeper  and  the  hostler, 


40  THE    OVERLAND    DRIVER. 

the  stage-driver  was  a  hero — a  great  and  shining  dignitary, 
the  world's  favorite  son,  the  envy  of  the  people,  the  observed 
of  the  nations.  When  they  spoke  to  him  they  received  his 
insolent  silence  meekly,  and  as  being  the  natural  and  proper 
conduct  of  so  great  a  man;  when  he  opened  his  lips  they  all 
hung  on  his  words  with  admiration  (he  never  honored  a  par- 
ticular  individual  with  a  remark,  but  addressed  it  with  a  broad 
generality  to  the  horses,  the  stables,  the  surrounding  country 
and  the  human  underlings) ;  when  he  discharged  a  facetious 
insulting  personality  at  a  hostler,  that  hostler  was  happy  for 
the  day  ;  when  he  uttered  his  one  jest — old  as  the  hills,  coarse, 
profane,  witless,  arid  inflicted  on  the  same  audience,  in  the 
same  language,  every  time  his  coach  drove  up  there — the  var- 
lets  roared,  and  slapped  their  thighs,  and  swore  it  was  the  best 
thing  they'd  ever  heard  in  all  their  lives.  And  how  they 
would  fly  around  when  he  wanted  a  basin  of  water,  a  gourd 
of  the  same,  or  a  light  for  his  pipe  ! — but  they  would  instantly 
insult  a  passenger  if  he  so  far  forgot  himself  as  to  crave  a 
favor  at  their  hands.  They  could  do  that  sort  of  insolence  as 
well  as  the  driver  they  copied'  it  from — for,  let  it  be  borne  in 
mind,  the  overland  driver  had  but  little  less  contempt  for  his 
passengers  than  he  had  for  his  hostlers. 

The  hostlers  and  station-keepers  treated  the  really  power 
ful  conductor  of  the  coach  merely  with  the  best  of  what  was 
their  idea  of  civility,  but  the  driver  was  the  only  being  they 
bowed  down  to  and  worshipped.  How  admiringly  they 
would  gaze  up  at  him  in  his  high  seat  as  he  gloved  himself 
with  lingering  deliberation,  while  some  happy  hostler  held  the 
bunch  of  reins  aloft,  and  waited  patiently  for  him  to  take  it ! 
And  how  they  would  bombard  him  with  glorifying  ejaculations 
as  he  cracked  his  long  whip  and  went  careering  away. 

The  station  buildings  were  long,  low  huts,  made  of  sun- 
dried,  mud-colored  bricks,  laid  up  without  mortar  (adobes,  tho 
Spaniards  call  these  bricks,  and  Americans  shorten  it  to 
^dobics).  The  roofs,  which  had  no  slant  to  them  worth  speak 
ing  of,  were  thatched  and  then  sodded  or  covered  with  a  thick 
layer  of  earth,  and  from  this  sprung  a  pretty  rank  growth  of 


ACCOMMODATIONS    AT    THE    "STATION-HOUSE."      41 

Weeds  and  grass.  It  was  the  first  time  we  had  ever  seen  a 
man's  front  yard  on  top  of  his  house.  The  buildings  consisted 
of  barns,  stable-room  for  twelve  or  fifteen  horses,  and  a  hut 
for  an  eating-room  for  passengers.  This  latter  had  bunks  in 
it  for  the  station-keeper  and  a  hostler  or  two.  You  could  rest 
your  elbow  on  its  eaves,  and  you  had  to  bend  in  order  to  get 
in  at  the  door.  In  place  of  a  window  there  was  a  square  hole 
about  large  enough  for  a  man  to  crawl  through,  but  this  had 
no  glass  in  it.  There  was  no  flooring,  but  the  ground  was 
packed  hard.  There  was  no  stove,  but  the  fire-place  served 
all  needful  purposes.  There  were  no  shelves,  no  cupboards, 
no  closets.  In  a  corner  stood 
an  open  sack  of  flour,  and 
nestling  against  its  base  were 
a  couple  of  black  and  vener- 1 
able  tin  coffee-pots,  a  tin  tea- ' 
pot,  a  little  bag  of  salt,  and  a 
side  of  bacon. 

By  the  door  of  the  station- 
keeper's  den,  outside,  was  a 
tin  wash-basin,  on  the  ground. 
Near  it  was  a  pail  of  water 
and  a  piece  of  yellow  bar 
soap,  and  from  the  eaves 
hung  a  hoary  blue  woolen 
shirt,  significantly — but  this 
latter  was  the  station-keeper's 
private  towel,  and  only  two 
persons  in  all  the  party 
might  venture  to  use  it — the 
stage-driver  and  the  con 
ductor.  The  latter  would  not,  from  a  sense  of  decency ;  the 
former  would  not,  because  he  did  not  choose  to  encourage  the 
advances  of  a  station-keeper.  We  had  towels — in  the  valise ; 
they  might  as  well  have  been  in  Sodom  and  Gomorrah.  We 
(and  the  conductor,  ^sed  our  handkerchiefs,  and  the  driver  his 
pantaloons  and  sleeves.  By  the  door,  inside,  was  fastened  a 
small  old-fashioned  looking-glass  frame,  with  two  little  frag- 


A  POWERFUL  GLASS. 


OUR    WORTHY    LANDLORD. 


AN    IIEIHLOOM. 


ments  of  the  original  mirror  lodged  down  in  one  corner  of  it. 
This  arrangement  afforded  a  pleasant  double-barreled  portrait 
of  you  when  yon  looked  into  it,  with  one  half  of  your  head  set 
up  a  couple  of  inches  above  the  other  half.  From  the  glass 
frame  hung  the  half  of  a  comb  by  a  string — but  if  I  had  to 
describe  that  patriarch  or  die,  I  believe  I  would  order  some 

sample  coffins.  It  had  come 
down  from  Esau  and  Samson, 
and  had  been  accumulating 
hair  ever  since— along  with 
certain  impurities.  In  one 
corner  of  the  room  stood  three 
or  four  rifies  and  muskets,  together  with  horns  and  pouches  of 

ammunition.  J  The  station-men 
wore  pantaloons  of  coarse, 
country-woven  stuff,  and  into 
the  seat  and  the  inside  of  the 
legs  were  sewed  ample  additions 
of  buckskin,  to  do  duty  in  place 
of  leggings,  when  the  man  rode 
horseback — so  the  pants  were 
half  dull  blue  and  half  yellow, 
and  unspeakably  picturesque. 
The  pants  were  stuffed  into  the 
tops  of  high  boots,  the  heels 
whereof  were  armed  with  great 
Spanish  spurs,  whose  little  iron 
clogs  and  chains  jingled  with 
every  step.  The  man  wore  a 
huge  beard  and  mustachios,  an 
old  slouch  hat,  a  blue  woolen 
shirt,  no  suspenders,  no  vest,  no 
coat — in  a  leathern  sheath  in  his 


OUR   LANDLORD. 


belt,  a  great  lonar 


"  navy  " 


re 


volver  (slung  on  right  side,  hammer  to  the  front),  and  project 
ing  from  his  boot  a  horn-handled  I  owie-knife.  The  furniture 
of  the  hut  was  neither  gorgeous  nor  much  in  the  way.  The 
rocking-chairs  and  sofas  were  not  present,  and  never  had  been, 


HIS    "FIXINGS    AND    THINGS.1 


43 


but  they  were  represented  by  two  three-legged  stools,  a  pine- 
board  bench  four  feet  long,  and  two  empty  candle-boxes. 
The  table  was  a  greasy  board  on  stilts,  and  the  table-cloth  and 
napkins  had  not  come — and  they  were  not  looking  for  them, 
either.  A  battered  tin  platter,  a  knife  and  fork,  and  a  tin  pint 
cup,  were  at  each  man's  place,  and  the  driver  had  a  queens- 
ware  saucer  that  had  seen  better  days.  Of  course  this  duke 
sat  at  the  head  of  the  table.  There  was  one  isolated  piece  of 
table  furniture  that  bore  about  it  a  touching  air  of  grandeur 
in  misfortune.  This  was  the  caster.  It  wras  German  silver, 
and  crippled  and  rusty,  but  it  was  so  preposterously  out  of 
place  there  that  it  was  suggestive  of  a  tattered  exiled  king 
among  barbarians,  and  the  majesty  of  its  native  position  com 
pelled  respect  even  in  its  degradation.  There  was  only  one 
cruet  left,  and  that  was  a  stopperless,  fly-specked,  broken- 
necked  thing,  writh  two 
inches  of  vinegar  in  it,  and 
a  dozen  preserved  flies  with 
their  heels  up  and  looking 
sorry  they  had  invested 
there. 

The  station-keeper  up 
ended  a  disk  of  last  week's 
bread,  of  the  shape  and  size 
of  an  old-time  cheese,  and 
carved  some  slabs  from  it 
which  were  as  good  as  Ni 
cholson  pavement,  and  ten 
derer. 

He  sliced  off  a  piece  of  bacon  for  each  man,  but  only  the 
experienced  old  hands  made  out  to  eat  it,  for  it  was  condemned 
army  bacon  which  the  United  States  would  not  feed  to  its 
soldiers  in  the  forts,  and  the  stage  company  hnd  bought  it 
cheap  for  the  sustenance  of  their  passengers  and  employes. 
We  may  have  found  this  condemned  army  bacon  further  out 
on  the  plains  than  the  section  I  am  locating  it  in,  but  wefowid 
it — there  is  no  gainsaying  that. 

Then  he  poured  for  us  a  beverage  which  he  called  "  Slum 


DIGNIFIED   EXILE. 


44: 


HOW    HE    "KEPT    A    HOTEL." 


gullion"  and  it  is  hard  to  think  he  was  not  inspired  when 
he  named  it.  It  really  pretended  to  be  tea,  but  there  was 
too  much  dish-rag,  and  sand,  and  old  bacon-rind  in  it  to  deceive 


DRINKIKO 


the  intelligent  traveler.  He  had  no  sugar  and  no  milk — not 
even  a  spoon  to  stir  the  ingredients  with. 

We  could  not  eat  the  bread  or  the  meat,  nor  drink  the 
"  slumgullion."  And  when  I  looked  at  that  melancholy  vinegar- 
cruet,  I  thougfit  of  the  anecdote  (a  very,  very  old  one,  even 
at  that  day)  of  the  traveler  who  sat  down  to  a  table  which 
had  nothing  on  it  but  a  mackerel  and  a  pot  of  mustard.  He 
asked  the  landlord  if  this  was  all.  The  landlord  said  : 

"  All !  Why,  thunder  and  lightning,  I  should  think  there 
was  mackerel  enough  there  for  six." 

"  But  I  don't  like  mackerel." 

"  Oh — then  help  yourself  to  the  mustard." 

In  other  days  I  had  considered  it  a  good,  a  very  good, 
anecdote,  but  there  was  a  dismal  plausibility  about  it,  here, 
that  took  all  the  humor  out  of  it. 


ETIQUETTE    AT    THE    TABLE.  45 

Our   breakfast   was  before   us,   but  our  teeth  were   idle. 
I  tasted  and  smelt,  and  said  I  would  take  coffee,  I  believed. 
The  station-boss  stopped  dead  still,  and  glared  at  me  speech 
less.     At  last,  when  he  came  to,  he  turned  away  and  said,  as  one 
who  communes  with  himself  upon  a  matter  too  vast  to  grasp : 

"  Coffee  !  Well,  if  that 
don't  go  clean  ahead  of  me, 
I'm  d d  !  " 

We  could  not  eat,  and 
there  was  no  conversation 
among  the  hostlers  and 
herdsmen — we  all  sat  at  the 
same  board.  At  least  there 
was  no  conversation  further 
than  a  single  hurried  request, 
now  and  then,  from  one  em 
ploye  to  another.  It  was 
always  in  the  same  form, 
and  always  gruffly  friendly. 
Its  western  freshness  and 
novelty  startled  me,  at  first, 
and  interested  me;  but  it 
presently  grew  monotonous, 
and  lost  its  charm.  It  was  : 

"  Pass  the  bread,  you  son 

of  a  skunk  ! "  No,  I  forget — skunk  was  not  the  word ;  it  seems 
to  me  it  was  still  stronger  than  that ;  I  know  it  was,  in  fact, 
but  it  is  gone  from  my  memory,  apparently.  However,  it  is 
no  matter — probably  it  was  too  strong  for  print,  anyway.  It 
is  the  landmark  in  my  memory  which  tells  me  where  I  first 
encountered  the  vigorous  new  vernacular  of  the  occidental 
plains  and  mountains. 

We  gave  up  the  breakfast,  and  paid  our  dollar  apiece  and 
went  back  to  our  mail-bag  bed  in  the  coach,  and  found  com 
fort  in  our  pipes.  Right  here  we  suffered  the  first  diminution 
of  our  princely  state.  We  left  our  six  fine  horses  and  took  six 
mules  in  their  place.  But  they  were  wild  Mexican  fellows,  and 


A  JOKE  WITHOUT  CREAM. 


46      OVERLAND  JOURNEY  TEN  YEARS  AGO. 

a  man  had  to  stand  at  the  head  of  each  of  them  and  hold  him 
fast  while  the  driver  gloved  and  got  himself  ready.  And 
when  at  last  he  grasped  the  reins  and  gave  the  word,  the  men 
sprung  suddenly  away  from  the  mules'  heads  and  the  coach 
shot  from  the  station  as  if  it  had  issued  from  a  cannon.  How 
the  frantic  animals,  did  scamper !  It  was  a  fierce  and  furious 
gallop — and  the  gait  never  altered  for  a  moment.till  we  reeled 
off  ten  or  twelve  miles  and  swept  up  to  the  next  collection  of 
little  station-huts  and  stables. 

So  we  flew  along  all  day.  At  2  P.M.  the  belt  of  timber 
that  fringes  the  North  Platte  and  marks  its  windings  through 
the  vast  level  floor  of  the  Plains  came  in  sight.  At  4  P.M. 
we  crossed  a  branch  of  the  river,  and  at  5  P.M.  we  crossed 
the  Platte  itself,  and  landed  at  Fort  Kearney,  ffty-six  hours 
out  from  St.  Joe — THREE  HUNPUED  MILES  ! 

Now  that  was  stage-coaching  on  the  great  overland,  ten  or 
twelve  years  ago,  when  perhaps  not  more  than  ten  men  in 
America,  all  told,  expected  to  live  to  see  a  railroad  follow  that 
route  to  the  Pacific.  But  the  railroad  is  there,  now,  and  it 
pictures  a  thousand  odd  comparisons  and  contrasts  in  my  mind 
to  read  the  following  sketch,  in  the  New  York  Times,  of  a 
recent  trip  over  almost  the  very  ground  I  have  been  describ 
ing.  I  can  scarcely  comprehend  the  new  state  of  things : 

"ACROSS    THE    CONTINENT. 

"  At  4.20  P.M.,  Sunday,  we  rolled  out  of  the  station  at  Omaha,  and  started 
westward  on  our  long  jaunt.  A  couple  of  hours  out,  dinner  was  announced — 
an  "  event "  to  those  of  us  who  had  yet  to  experience  what  it  is  to  eat  in  one 
of  Pullman's  hotels  on  wheels ;  so,  stepping  into  the  car  next  forward  of 
our  sleeping  palace,  we  found  ourselves  in  the  dining-car.  It  was  a  reve 
lation  to  us,  that  first  dinner  on  Sunday.  And  though  we  continued  to  dine 
for  four  days,  and  had  as  many  breakfasts  and  suppers,  our  whole  party 
never  ceased  to  admire  the  perfection  of  the  arrangements,  and  the  marvelous 
results  achieved.  Upon  tables  covered  with  snowy  linen,  and  garnished  with 
services  of  solid  silver,  Ethiop  waiters,  flitting  about  in  spotless  white,  placed 
as  by  magic  a  repast  at  which  Delmonico  himself  could  have  had  no  occa 
sion  to  blush  ;  and,  indeed,  in  some  respects  it  would  be  hard  for  that  distin 
guished  chef  to  match  our  menu  ;  for,  in  addition  to  all  that  ordinarily  makes 


ACROSS    THE    CONTINENT.  47 

up  a  first-chop  dinner,  had  we  not  our  antelope  steak  (the  gormand  who  has 
not  experienced  this— bah !  what  does  he  know  of  the  feast  of  fat  things  ?) 
our  delicious  mountain-brook  trout,  and  choice  fruits  and  berries,  and  (sauce 
piquant  and  unpurchasable !)  our  sweet-scented,  appetite-compelling  air  of 
the  prairies  ?  You  may  depend  upon  it,  we  all  did  justice  to  the  good  things, 
and  as  we  washed  them  down  with  bumpers  of  sparkling  Krug,  whilst  we 


PULLMAN   CAB   DIXIKG-SALOON. 

sped  along  at  the  rate  of  thirty  miles  an  hour,  agreed  it  was  the  fastest  living 
we  had  ever  experienced.  (We  beat  that,  however,  two  days  afterward 
when  we  made  twenty -seven  miles  in  twenty-seven  minutes,  while  our  Cham 
pagne  glasses  filled  to  the  brim  spilled  not  a  drop  !)  After  dinner  we  re 
paired  to  our  drawing-room  car,  and,  as  it  was  Sabbath  eve.  intoned  some  of 
the  grand  old  hymns—"  Praise  God  from  whom,"  etc. ;  "  Shining  Shore," 
"  Coronation,"  etc. — the  voices  of  the  men  singers  and  of  the  women  singers 
blending  sweetly  in  the  evening  air,  while  our  train,  with  its  great,  glaring 
Polyphemus  eye,  lighting  up  long  vistas  of  prairie,  rushed  into  the  night 
and  the  Wild.  Then  to  bed  in  luxurious  couches,  where  we  slept  the  sleep 
of  the  just  and  only  awoke  the  next  morning  (Monday)  at  eight  o'clock,  to 
find  ourselves  at  the  crossing  of  the  North  Platte,  three  hundred  miles  from 
Omaha— fifteen  hours  and  forty  minutes,  out." 


CHAPTER   Y. 

A  ANOTHER  night  of  alternate  tranquillity  and  turmoil. 
JlA-  But  morning  came,  by  and  by.  It  was  another  glad 
awakening  to  fresh  breezes,  vast  expanses  of  level  greensward, 
bright  sunlight,  an  impressive  solitude  utterly  without  visible 
human  beings  or  human  habitations,  and  an  atmosphere  of 
such  amazing  magnifying  properties  that  trees  that  seemed 
close  at  hand  were  more  than  three  miles  away.  "We  resumed 
undress  uniform,  climbed  a-top  of  the  flying  coach,  dangled 
our  legs  over  the  side,  shouted  occasionally  at  our  frantic 
mules,  merely  to  see  them  lay  their  ears  back  and  scamper 
faster,  tied  our  hats  on  to  keep  our  hair  from  blowing  away, 
and  leveled  an  outlook  over  the  world-wide  carpet  about  us 
for  things  new  and  strange  to  gaze  at.  Even  at  this  day  it 
thrills  me  through  and  through  to  think  of  the  life,  the  glad 
ness  and  the  wild  sense  of  freedom  that  used  to  make  the 
blood  dance  in  my  veins  on  those  fine  overland  mornings ! 

Along  about  an  hour  after  breakfast  we  saw  the  first  prai 
rie-dog  villages,  the  first  antelope,  and  the  first  v;olf.  If  I 
remember  rightly,  this  latter  was  the  regular  c&you  (pro 
nounced  ky-o-te)  of  the  farther  deserts  And  ii  it  was,  he 
was  not  a  pretty  creature  or  respectable  either,  for  I  got  well 
acquainted  with  his  race  afterward,  and  caa  speak  with  con 
fidence.  The  cayote  is  a  long,  slim,  sick  and  sorry-looking 


THE    CAYOTE. 


49 


skeleton,  with  a  gray  wolf-skin  stretched  over  it,  a  tolerably 
bushy  tail  that  forever  sags  down  with  a  despairing  expression 
of  forsakenness  and  misery,  a  furtive  and  evil  eye,  and  a  long, 
sharp  foce,  with 
slightly  lifted  lip 
and  exposed  teeth, 
lie  has  a  general 
slinking  expression 
all  over.  The  ca- 
yote  is  a  living, 
breathing  allegory 
of  Want.  He  is 
always  Imngry.  He 
is  always  poor,  out 
of  luck  and  friend 
less.  The  meanest 
creatures  despise 
him,  and  even  the 
fleas  would  desert 
him  for  a  velocipede.  He  is  so  spiritless  and  cowardly  that 
even  while  his  exposed  teeth  are  pretending  a  threat,  the  rest 
of  his  face  is  apologizing  for  it.  And  he  is  so  homely ! — so 
scrawny,  and  ribby,  and  coarse-haired,  and  pitiful.  When  he 
sees  you  he  lifts  his  lip  and  lets  a  flash  of  his  teeth  out,  and 
then  turns  a  little  out  of  the  course  he  was  pursuing,  de 
presses  his  head  a  bit,  and  strikes  a  long,  soft-footed  trot 
through  the  sage-brush,  glancing  over  his  shoulder  at  you, 
from  time  to  time,  till  he  is  about  out  of  easy  pistol  range, 
and  then  he  stops  and  takes  a  deliberate  survey  of  you; 
he  will  trot  fifty  yards  and  stop  again — another  fifty  and  stop 
again ;  arid  finally  the  gray  of  his  gliding  body  blends  with 
the  gray  of  the  sage-brush,  and  he  disappears.  All  this  is 
when  you  make  no  demonstration  against  him ;  but  if  you  do, 
he  develops  a  livelier  interest  in  his  journey,  and  instantly 
electrifies  his  heels  and  puts  such  a  deal  of  real  estate  between 
himself  and  your  weapon,  that  by  the  time  you  have  raised 
the  hammer  you  see  that  you  need  a  minie  rifle,  and  by  the 


OUR   MORNING   RIDE. 


50 


A    DOG'S    EXPERIENCES. 


time  you  have  got  him  in  line  you  need  a  rifled  cannon,  and 
by  the  time  you  have  "  drawn  a  bead  "  on  him  you  see  well 
enough  that  nothing  but  an  unusually  long-winded  streak  of 
lightning  could  reach  him  where  he  is  now.  But  if  you  start 
a  swift-footed  dog  after  him,  you  will  enjoy  it  ever  so  much — 
especially  if  it  is  a  dog  that  has  a  good  opinion  of  himself,  and 
has  been  brought  up  to  think  he  knows  something  about  speed. 

The  cayote  will  go  swing 
ing  gently  off  on  that  de 
ceitful  trot  of  his,  and 
every  little  while  he  will 
smile  a  fraudful  smile 
over  his  shoulder  that 
will  fill  that  dog  entirely 
full  of  encouragement  and 
worldly  ambition,  and 
make  him  lay  his  head 
still  lower  to  the  ground, 
and  stretch  his  neck  fur 
ther  to  the  front,  and 
pant  more  fiercely,  and 
stick  his  tail  out  straighter 
behind,  and  move  his  fu 
rious  legs  with  a  yet 
wilder  frenzy,  and  leave  a 
broader  and  broader,  and 
higher  and  denser  cloud 
of  desert  sand  smoking  behind,  and  marking  his  long  wake 
across  the  level  plain !  And  all  this  time  the  dog  is  only  a  short 
twenty  feet  behind  the  cayote,  and  to  save  the  soul  of  him  he 
cannot  understand  why  it  is  that  he  cannot  get  perceptibly 
closer ;  and  he  begins  to  get  aggravated,  and  it  makes  him  mad 
der  and  madder  to  see  how  gently  the  cayote  glides  along 
and  never  pants  or  sweats  or  ceases  to  smile ;  and  he  grows  still 
more  and  more  incensed  to  see  how  shamefully  he  has  been 
taken  in  by  an  entire  stranger,  and  what  an  ignoble  swindle 
that  long,  calm,  soft-footed  trot  is ;  and  next  he  notices  that  he 


PRAIRIE     DOGS. 


A    DOG'S    EXPERIENCES    CONTINUED. 


51 


is  getting  fagged,  and  that  the  cayote  actually  has  to  slacken 
speed  a  little  to  keep  from  running  away  from  him — and  then 
that  town-dog  is  mad  in  earnest,  and  he  begins  to  strain  and 
weep  and  swear,  and  paw  the  sand  higher  than  ever,  and  reach 
for  the  cayote  with  concentrated  and  desperate  energy.  This 
"  spurt "  finds  him  six  feet  behind  the  gliding  enemy,  and  two 
miles  from  his  friends.  And  then,  in  the  instant  that  a  wild 
new  hope  is  lighting  up  his  face,  the  cayote  turns  and  smiles 
blandly  upon  him  once  more,  and  with  a  something  about  it 
which  seems  to  say :  "  Well,  I  shall  have  to  tear  myself  away 
from  you,  bub — business  is  business,  and  it  wTill  not  do  for  me 


A    CAYOTE. 


to  be  fooling  along  this  way  all  day  " — and  forthwith  there  is 
a  rushing  sound,  and  the  sudden  splitting  of  a  long  crack 
through  the  atmosphere,  and  behold  that  dcg  is  solitary  and 
alone  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  solitude ! 

It  makes  his  head  swim.  He  stops,  and  looks  all  around ; 
climbs  the  nearest  sand-mound,  and  gazes  into  the  distance ; 
shakesjm  head  reflectively,  and  then,  without  a  word,  he 
turns  and  jogs  along  back  to  his  train,  and  takes  up  a  humble 
position  under  the  hindmost  wagon,  and  feels  unspeakably 
mean,  and  looks  ashamed,  and  hangs  his  tail  at  half-mast  for  a 
week.  And  for  as  much  as  a  year  after  that,  whenever  there 
is  a  great  hue  and  cry  after  a  cayote,  that  dog  will  merely 
glance  in  that  direction  without  emotion,  and  apparently  ob 
serve  to  himself,  "  I  believe  1  do  not  wish  any  of  the  pie." 


52 


THE    CAYOTE    FAMILY    AND    KIN. 


The  cayote  lives  chiefly  in  the  most  desolate  and  forbidding 
deserts,  along  with  the  lizard,  the  jackass-rabbit  and  the  raven, 
and  gets  an  uncertain  and  precarious  living,  and  earns  it.  He 
seems  to  subsist  almost  wholly  on  the  carcases  of  oxen,  mules 
and  hors'es  that  have  dropped  out  of  emigrant  trains  and  died, 
and  upon  windfalls  of  carrion,  and  occasional  legacies  of 


SHOWING  KESPECT   TO   RELATIVES. 


offal  bequeathed  to  him 
by  white  men  who  have 
been  opulent  enough  to 
have  something  better 
to  butcher  than  con 
demned  army  bacon. 
He  will  eat  anything  in 
the  world  that  his  first  cousins,  the  desert-frequenting  tribes 
of  Indians  will,  and  they  will  eat  anything  they  can  bite. 
It  is  a  curious  fact  that  these  latter  are  the  only  creatures 
known  to  history  who  will  eat  nitro-glycerine  and  ask  for 
more  if  they  survive. 

The  cayote  of  the  deserts  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains 
has  a  peculiarly  hard  time  of  it,  owing  to  the  fact  that  his 
relations,  the  Indians,  are  just  as  apt  to  be  the  first  to  detect 
a  seductive  scent  on  the  desert  breeze,  and  follow  the  fragrance 
to  the  late  ox  it  emanated  from,  as  he  is  himself;  and  when 
this  occurs  lie  has  to  content  himself  with  sitting  off  at  a  little 


BOARDING    NEAR    BY.  53 

distance  watching  those  people  strip  off  and  dig  out  everything 
edible,  and  walk  off  with  it.  Then  he  and  the  waiting  ravens 
explore  the  skeleton  and  polish  the  bones.  It  is  considered 
that  the  cayote,  and  the  obscene  bird,  and  the  Indian  of  the 
desert,  testify  their  blood  kinship  with  each  other  in  that  they 
live  together  in  the  waste  places  of  the  earth  on  terms  of  per 
fect  confidence  and  friendship,  wrhile  hating  all  other  creatures 
and  yearning  to  assist  at  their  funerals.  He  does  not  mind 
going  a  hundred  miles  to  breakfast,  and  a  hundred  and  fifty  to 
dinner,  because  he  is  sure  to  have  three  or  four  days  between 
meals,  and  he  can  just  as  well  be  traveling  and  looking  at  the 
scenery  as  lying  around  doing  nothing  and  adding  to  the  bur 
dens  of  his  parents. 

We  soon  learned  to  recognize  the  sharp,  vicious  bark  of  the 
cayote  as  it  came  across  the  murky  plain  at  night  to  disturb 
our  dreams  among  the  mail-sacks ;  and  remembering  his  for 
lorn  aspect  and  his  hard  fortune,  made  shift  to  wish  him  the 
blessed  novelty  of  a  long  day's  good  luck  and  a  limitless  larder 
the  morrow. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

OUR  new  conductor  (just  shipped)  had  been  without  sleep 
for  twenty  hours.  Such  a  thing  was  very  frequent. 
From  St.  Joseph,  Missouri,  to  Sacramento,  California,  by  stage 
coach,  was  nearly  nineteen  hundred  miles,  and  the  trip  was 
often  made  in  fifteen  days  (the  cars  do  it  in  four  and  a  half, 
now),  but  the  time  specified  in  the  mail  contracts,  and  required 
by  the  schedule,  was  eighteen  or  nineteen  days,  if  I  remember 
rightly.  This  was  to  make  fair  allowance  for  winter  storms 
and  snows,  and  other  unavoidable  causes  of  detention.  The 
stage  company  had  everything  under  strict  discipline  and  good 
system.  Over  each  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  road  they 
placed  an  agent  or  superintendent,  and  invested  him  with 
great  authority.  His  beat  or  jurisdiction  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  was  called  a  "  division."  He  purchased  horses, 
mules  harness,  and  food  for  men  and  beasts,  and  distributed 
these  things  among  his  stage  stations,  from  time  to  time,  ac 
cording  to  his  judgment  of  what  each  station  needed.  He 
erected  station  buildings  and  dug  wells.  He  attended  to  the 
paying  of  the  station-keepers,  hostlers,  drivers  and  blacksmiths, 
and  discharged  them  whenever  he  chose.  He  was  a  very, 
very  great  man  in  his  "  division  " — a  kind  of  Grand  Mogul,  a 
Sultan  of  the  Indies,  in  whose  presence  common  men  were 
modest  of  speech  and  manner,  and  in  the  glare  of  whose  great 
ness  even  the  dazzling  stage-driver  dwindled  to  a  penny  dip. 
There  were  about  eight  of  these  kings,  all  told,  on  the  over- 
land  route. 

Next  in  rank  and  importance  to  the  division-agent  came  the 


THE  OVERLAND  CONDUCTOR. 


55 


"  conductor."  His  beat  was  the  same  length  as  the  agent's — 
two  hundred  and  fifty  miles.  He  sat  with  the  driver,  and 
(when  necessary)  rode  that  fearful  distance,  night  and  day, 
without  other  rest  or  sleep  than  what  he  could  get  perched 
thus  on  top  of  the  flying  vehicle.  Think  of  it !  He  had  abso 
lute  charge  of  the  mails,  express  matter,  passengers  and  stage, 
coach,  until  he  delivered  them  to  the  next  conductor,  and  got 
his  receipt  for  them.  Con 
sequently  he  had  to  be  a 
man  of  intelligence,  de 
cision  and  considerable  ex 
ecutive  ability.  He  was 
usually  a  quiet,  pleasant 
man,  who  attended  closely 
to  his  duties,  and  was  a  good 
deal  of  a  gentleman.  It  was 
not  absolutely  necessary  that 
the  division-agent  should  be 
a  gentleman,  and  occasion 
ally  he  wasn't.  But  he  was 
always  a  general  in  admin 
istrative  ability,  and  a  bull 
dog  in  courage  and  deter 
mination  —  otherwise  the 
chieftainship  over  the  law 
less  underlings  of  the  over 
land  service  would  never  in  any  instance  have  been  to  him 
anything  but  an  equivalent  for  a  month  of  insolence  and  dis 
tress  and  a  bullet  and  a  coffin  at  the  end  of  it.  There  were 
about  sixteen  or  eighteen  conductors  on  the  overland,  for  there 
was  a  daily  stage  each  way,  and  a  conductor  on  every  stage. 

Next  in  real  and  official  rank  and  importance,  after  the 
conductor,  came  my  delight,  the  driver — next  in  real  but  not 
in  apparent  importance — for  we  have  seen  that  in  the  eyes  of 
the  common  herd  the  driver  was  to  the  conductor  as  an  admi 
ral  is  to  the  captain  of  the  flag-ship.  The  driver's  beat  was 
pretty  long,  and  his  sleeping-time  at  the  stations  pretty  short, 


THE    CONDUCTOR. 


56  DRIVERS    DOING    DOUBLE    DUTY. 

sometimes;  and  so,  but  for  the  grandeur  of  his  position  his 
would  have  been  a  sorry  life,  as  well  as  a  hard  and  a  wearing 
one.  We  took  a  new  driver  every  day  or  every  night  (for 
they  drove  backward  and  forward  over  the  same  piece  of  road 
all  the  time),  and  therefore  we  never  got  as  well  acquainted 
with  them  as  we  did  with  the  conductors ;  and  besides,  they 
would  have  been  above  being  familiar  with  such  rubbish  as 
passengers,  anyhow,  as  a  general  thing.  Still,  we  were  always 
eager  to  get  a  sight  of  each  and  every  new  driver  as  soon  as  the 
watch  changed,  for  each  and  every  day  we  were  either  anxious  to 
get  rid  of  an  unpleasant  one,  or  loath  to  part  with  a  driver  we 
had  learned  to  like  and  had  come  to  be  sociable  and  friendly 
with.  And  so  the  first  question  we  asked  the  conductor  when 
ever  we  got  to  where  we  were  to  exchange  drivers,  was  always, 
u  Which  is  him  ? "  The  grammar  was  faulty,  maybe,  but  we 
could  not  know,  then,  that  it  would  go  into  a  book  some  day. 
As  long  as  everything  went  smoothly,  the  overland  driver  was 
well  enough  situated,  but  if  a  fellow  driver  got  sick  suddenly 
it  made  trouble,  for  the  coach  must  go  on,  and  so  the  poten 
tate  who  was  about  to  climb  down  and  take  a  luxurious  rest 
after  his  long  night's  siege  in  the  midst  of  wind  and  rain  and 
darkness,  had  to  stay  where  he  was  and  do  the  sick  man's 
work.  Once,  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  when  I  found  a  driver 
sound  asleep  on  the  box,  and  the  mules  going  at  the  usual 
break-neck  pace,  the  conductor  said  never  mind  him,  there  was 
no  danger,  and  he  was  doing  double  duty — had  driven  seventy- 
five  miles  on  one  coach,  and  was  now  going  back  over  it  on 
this  without  rest  or  sleep.  A  hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  hold 
ing  back  of  six  vindictive  mules  and  keeping  them  from 
climbing  the  trees !  It  sounds  incredible,  but  I  remember 
the  statement  well  enough. 

The  station-keepers,  hostlers,  etc.,  were  low,  rough  charac 
ters,  as  already  described  ;  and  from  western  Nebraska  to 
Nevada  a  considerable  sprinkling  of  them  might  be  fairly  set 
down  as  outlaws — fugitives  from  justice,  criminals  whose  best 
security  was  a  section  of  country  which  was  without  law  and 
without  even  the  pretence  of  it.  When  the  "  division-agent " 


AN    OVERLAND    SCHOOL. 


issued  an  order  to  one  of  these  parties  lie  did  it  with  the  full 
understanding  that  he  might  have  to  enforce  it  with  a  navy 
six-shooter,  and  so  he  always  went  "  fixed  "  to  make  things  go 
along  smoothly.  Now  and  then  a  division-agent  was  really 
obliged  to  shoot  a  hostler  through  the  head  to  teach  him  some 


THE  SUPERINTENDENT  AS  A  TEACHER. 


simple  matter  that  he  could  have  taught  him  with  a  cluL  i 
circumstances  and  surroundings  had  been  different.  But  they 
were  snappy,  able  men,  those  division-agents,  and  when  they 
tried  to  teach  a  subordinate  anything,  that  subordinate  gener 
ally  "  got  it  through  his  head." 

A  great  portion  of  this  vast  machinery — these  hundreds  of 
men  and  coaches,  and  thousands  of  mules  and  horses — was  in 
the  hands  of  Mr.  Ben  Holliday.  All  the  western  half  of  the 
business  was  in  his  hands.  This  reminds  me  of  an  incident  of 
Palestine  travel  which  is  pertinent  here,  and  so  I  will  transfer 
it  just  in  the  language  in  which  I  find  it  set  down  in  my 
Holy  Land  note-book : 

No  doubt  everybody  has  heard  of  Ben  Holliday — a  man  of  prodigious 
energy,  who  used  to  send  mails  and  passengers  flying  across  the  continent 


58 


YOUNG    AMERICA    AT    JERICHO. 


in  liis  overland  stage-coaches  like  a  very  whirlwind — two  thousand  long 
miles  in  fifteen  days  and  a  half,  by  the  watch !  But  this  fragment  of  his 
tory  is  not  about  Ben  Holliday,  but  about  a  young  New  York  boy  by  the 
name  of  Jack,  who  traveled  with  our  small  party  of  pilgrims  in  the  Holy 
Land  (and  who  had  traveled  to  California  in  Mr.  Holliday's  overland  coaches 
three  years  before,  and  had  by  no  means  forgotten  it  or  lost  his  gushing  ad 
miration  of  Mr.  H.)  Aged  nineteen.  Jack  was  a  good  boy — a  good-hearted 
and  always  well-meaning  boy,  who  had  been  reared  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  and  although  he  was  bright  and  knew  a  great  many  useful  things, 
his  Scriptural  education  had  been  a  good  deal  neglected — to  such  a  degree, 
indeed,  that  all  Holy  Land  history  was  fresh  and  new  to  him,  and  all  Bible 


JACK    AND  THE  ELDERLY  PILGRIM. 

names  mysteries  that  had  never  disturbed  his  virgin  ear.  Also  in  our  party 
was  an  elderly  pilgrim  who  was  the  reverse  of  Jack,  in  that  he  was  learned 
in  the  Scriptures  and  an  enthusiast  concerning  them.  He  was  our  encyclo 
pedia,  and  we  were  never  tired  of  listening  to  his  speeches,  nor  he  of  making 
them.  He  never  passed  a  celebrated  locality,  from  Bashan  to  Bethlehem, 
without  illuminating  it  with  an  oration.  One  day,  when  camped  near  the 
ruins  of  Jericho,  he  burst  forth  with  something  like  this : 

"  Jack,  do  you  see  that  range  of  mountains  over  yonder  that  bounds  the 
Jordan  valley  ?    The  mountains  of  Moab,  Jack  1    Think  of  it,  my  boy— the 


THOUGHTLESS    COMPARISONS    OF    JACK.  59 

actual  mountains  of  Moab — renowned  in  Scripture  history  1  We  are 
actually  standing  face  to  face  with  those  illustrious  crags  and  peaks — and 
for  all  we  know "  [dropping  his  voice  impressively],  "  our  eyes  may  be 
resting  at  this  very  moment  upon  the  spot  WHERE  LIES  THE  MYSTERIOUS 
GRAVE  OF  MOSES  !  Think  of  it,  Jack !  " 

"  Moses  who  f  "  (falling  inflection). 

"  Moses  who!  Jack,  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself — you  ought  to 
be  ashamed  of  such  criminal  ignorance.  Why,  Moses,  the  great  guide,  sol 
dier,  poet,  lawgiver  of  ancient  Israel !  Jack,  from  this  spot  where  we  stand, 
to  Egypt,  stretches  a  fearful  desert  three  hundred  miles  in  extent — and 
across  that  desert  that  wonderful  man  brought  the  children  of  Israel ! — 
guiding  them  with  unfailing  sagacity  for  forty  years  over  the  sandy  desola 
tion  and  among  the  obstructing  rocks  and  hills,  and  landed  them  at  last,  safe 
and  sound,  with  insight  of  this  very  spot ;  and  where  we  now  stand  they 
entered  the  Promised  Land  with  anthems  of  rejoicing  !  It  was  a  wonderful, 
wonderful  thing  to  do,  Jack  !  Think  of  it !  " 

"  Forty  years  f  Only  three  hundred  miles  f  Humph !  Ben  Holliday 
would  have  fetched  them  through  in  thirty-six  hours  1 " 

The  boy  meant  no  harm.  He  did  not  know  that  he  had  said  anything 
that  was  wrong  or  irreverent.  And  so  no  one  scolded  him  or  felt  offended 
•with  him — and  nobody  could  but  some  ungenerous  spirit  incapable  of 
excusing  the  heedless  blunders  of  a  boy. 

At  noon  on  the  fifth  day  out,  we  arrived  at  the  "  Crossing 
of  the  South  Platte,"  alias  "  Julesburg,"  alias  "Overland 
City,"  four  hundred  and  seventy  miles  from  St.  Joseph — the 
strangest,  quaintest,  funniest  frontier  town  that  our  untraveled 
eyes  had  ever  stared  at  and  been  astonished  with. 


OHAPTEE  VII. 

IT  did  seem  strange  enough  to  see  a  town  again  after  what 
appeared  to  us  such  a  long  acquaintance  with  deep,  still, 
almost  lifeless  and  houseless  solitude  !  We  tumbled  out  into  the 
busy  street  feeling  like  meteoric  people  crumbled  off  the  corner 
of  some  other  world,  and  wakened  up  suddenly  in  this.  For  an 
hour  we  took  as  much  interest  in  Overland  City  as  if  we  had 
never  seen  a  town  before.  The  reason  we  had  an  hour  to  spare 
was  because  we  had  to  change  our  stage  (for  a  less  sumptuous 
affair,  called  a  "  mud-wagon  ")  and  transfer  our  freight  of  mails. 
Presently  we  got  under  way  again.  "We  came  to  the 
shallow,  yellow,  muddy  South  Platte,  with  its  low  banks  and 
its  scattering  flat  sand-bars  and  pigmy  islands — a  melancholy 
stream  straggling  through  the  centre  of  the  enormous  flat 
plain,  and  only  saved  from  being  impossible  to  find  with  the 
naked  eye  by  its  sentinel  rank  of  scattering  trees  standing  on 
either  bank.  The  Platte  was  "  up,"  they  said — which  made 
me  wish  I  could  see  it  when  it  was  down,  if  it  could  look  any 
sicker  and  sorrier.  They  said  it  was  a  dangerous  stream  to 
cross,  now,  because  its  quicksands  were  liable  to  swallow  up 
horses,  coach  and  passengers  if  an  attempt  was  made  to  ford 
it.  But  the  mails  had  to  go,  and  we  made  the  attempt.  Once 
or  twice  in  midstream  the  wheels  sunk  into  the  yielding  sands 
so  threateningly  that  we  half  believed  we  had  dreaded  and 
avoided  the  sea  all  our  lives  to  be  shipwrecked  in  a  "  mud- 
wagon  "  in  the  middle  of  a  desert  at  last.  But  we  dragged 
through  and  sped  away  toward  the  setting  sun. 


A    WONDERFUL    BUFFALO    HUNT. 


61 


Next  morning,  just  before  dawn,  when  about  five  hundred 

and  fifty  miles  from  St.  Joseph, 
our  mud- wagon  broke  down. 
We  were  to  be  delayed  five  OF 
six  hours,  and  therefore  we 
took  horses,  by  invitation,  and 
joined  a  party  who  were  just 
starting  on  a  buffalo  hunt.  It 
was  noble  sport  galloping  over 
the  plain  in  the  dewy  fresh 
ness  of  the  morning,  but  our 
part  of  the  hunt  ended  in 
disaster  and  disgrace,  for  a 
wounded  buffalo  bull  chased 
the  passenger  Bemis  nearly 
two  miles,  and  then  he  forsook 
his  horse  and  took  to  a  lone 
tree.  He  was  very  sullen 
about  the  matter  for  some 
twenty-four  hours,  but  at  last 
he  began  to  soften  little  by  lit 
tle,  and  finally  he  said : 

""Well,  it  was  not  funny, 
and  there  was  no  sense  in  those 
gawks  making  themselves  so 
facetious  over  it.  I  tell  you 
I  was  angry  in  earnest  for 
awhile.  I  should  have  shot 
that  long  gangly  lubber  they 
called  Hank,  if  I  could  have 
done  it  without  crippling  six 
or  seven  other  people — but  of 
course  I  couldn't,  the  old  <  Al 
len's'  so  confounded  compre 
hensive.  I  wish  those  loafers 
had  been  up  in  the  tree  ;  they 
wouldn't  have  wanted  to  laugh  so.  If  I  had  had  a  horse 


62 


BEMIS'S    VERSION    OF    IT. 


worth,  a  cent — but  no,  the  minute  he  saw  that  buffalo  bull 
wheel  on  him  and  give  a  bellow,  he  raised  straight  up  in  the 
air  and  stood  on  his  heels.  The  saddle  began  to  slip,  and  I 
took  him  round  the  neck  and  laid  close  to  him,  and  began 
to  pray.  Then  he  came  down  and  stood  up  on  the  other 
end  awhile,  and  the  bull  actually  stopped  pawing  sand  and 
bellowing  to  contemplate  the  inhuman  spectacle.  Then  the 


AN  INHUMAN  SPECTACLE. 


b  til  made  a  pass  at  him  and  uttered  a  bellow  that  sounded 
pt-rfectly  frightful,  it  was  so  close  to  me,  and  that  seemed 
to  literally  prostrate  my  horse's  reason,  and  make  a  raving 
difc  tracted  maniac  of  him,  and  I  wish  I  may  die  if  he  didn't 
stand  on  his  head  for  a  quarter  of  a  minute  and  shed  tears. 
He  was  absolutely  out  of  his  mind — he  was,  as  sure  as  truth 
itself,  and  he  really  didn't  know  what  he  was  doing.  Then 
the  bull  came  charging  at  us,  and  my  horse  dropped  down 
on  all  fours  and  took  a  fresh  start — and  then  for  the  next 


AN    IMPROMTU    CIRCUS. 


63 


ten  minutes  he  would  actually  throw  one  hand-spring  after 
another  so  fast  that  the  bull  began  to  get  unsettled,  too,  and 
didn't  know  where  to  start  in — and  so  he  stood  there  sneezing, 
and  shovelling  dust  over  his  back,  and  bellowing  every  now 
and  then,  and  thinking  he  had  got  a  fifteen-hundred  dollar 
circus  horse  for  breakfast,  certain.  Well,  I  was  first  out  on 
his  neck — the  horse's,  not  the  bull's — and  then  underneath, 
and  next  on  his  rump,  and  sometimes  head  up,  and  sometimes 
heels — but  I  tell  you  it  seemed  solemn  and  awful  to  be  rip 
ping  and  tearing  and  carrying  on  so  in  the  presence  of  death, 
as  you  might  say.  Pretty  soon  the  bull  made  a  snatch  for  us 
and  brought  away  some  of  my  horse's  tail  (I  suppose,  but  do 
not  know,  being  pretty  busy  at  the  time),  but  something  made 
him  hungry  for  solitude  and  suggested  to  him  to  get  up  and 
hunt  for  it.  And  then  you  ought  to  have  seen  that  spider- 
legged  old  skeleton  go  !  and  you  ought  to  have  seen  the  bull 


A  NEW  DEPARTURE. 

rat  out  »after  hip?.,  too — head  down,  tongue  out,  tail  up,  bellow 
ing  like  everything,  and  actually  mowing  down  the  weeds,  and 
tearing  up  the  earth,  and  boosting  up  the  sand  like  a  whirl 
wind  !  By  George,  it  was  a  hot  race  !  I  and  the  saddle  were 
back  on  the  rump,  and  I  had  the  bridle,  in  my  teeth  and  hold* 


(J4:  HAIRBREADTH    ESCAPE. 

ing  on  to  the  pommel  with  both  hands.  First  we  left  the 
dogs  behind ;  then  we  passed  a  jackass  rabbit ;  then  we  over 
took  a  cayote,  and  were  gaining  on  an  antelope  when  the 
rotten  girth  let  go  and  threw  me  about  thirty  yards  off  to  the 
left,  and  as  the  saddle  went  down  over  the  horse's  rump  lie 
gave  it  a  lift  with  his  heels  that  sent  it  more  than  four  hun 
dred  yards  up  in  the  air,  I  wish  I  may  die  in  a  minute  if  he 
didn't.  I  fell  at  the  foot  of  the  only  solitary  tree  there  was 
in  nine  counties  adjacent  (as  any  creature  could  see  with  the 
naked  eye),  and  the  next  second  I  had  hold  of  the  bark  with 
four  sets  of  nails  and  my  teeth,  and  the  next  second  after  that 
I  was  astraddle  of  the  main  limb  and  blaspheming  my  luck  in 
a  way  that  made  my  breath  smell  of  brimstone.  I  had  the 
bull,  now,  if  he  did  not  think  of  one  thing.  But  that  one 
thing  I  dreaded.  I  dreaded  it  very  seriously.  There  was  a 
possibility  that  the  bull  might  not  think  of  it,  but  there  were 
greater  chances  that  he  would.  I  made  up  my  mind  what  I 
would  do  in  case  he  did.  It  was  a  little  over  forty  feet  to 
the  ground  from  where  I  sat.  I  cautiously  unwound  the 
lariat  from  the  pommel  of  my  saddle — " 

"  Your  saddle  ?  Did  you  take  your  saddle  up  in  the  tree 
with  you  ? " 

"  Take  it  up  in  the  tree  with  me  ?  Why,  how  you  talk. 
Of  course  I  didn't.  No  man  could  do  that.  It  fell  in  the 
tree  when  it  came  down." 

«  Oh— exactly." 

"  Certainly.  I  unwound  the  lariat,  and  fastened  one  end 
of  it  to  the  limb.  It  was  the  very  best  green  raw-hide,  and 
capable  of  sustaining  tons.  I  made  a  slip-noose  in  the  other 
end,  and  then  hung  it  down  to  see  the  length.  It  reached 
down  twenty-two  feet — half  way  to  the  ground.  I  then 
loaded  every  barrel  of  the  Allen  with  a  double  charge.  I  felt 
satisfied.  I  said  to  myself,  if  he  never  thinks  of  that  one 
thing  that  I  dread,  all  right — but  if  he  does,  all  right  any 
how — I  am  fixed  for  him.  But  don't  you  know  that  the  very 
thing  a  man  dreads  is  the  thing  that  always  happens  ?  Indeed 
it  is  so.  I  watched  the  bull,  now,  with  anxiety — anxiety 


A    PLAUSIBLE    STORY. 


65 


which  no  one  can  conceive  of  who  has  not  been  in  such  a 
situation  and  felt  that  at  any  moment  death  might  come. 
Presently  a  thought  came  into  the  bull's  eye.  I  knew  it !  said 
I — if  my  nerve  fails  now,  I  am  lost.  Sure  enough,  it  was 
just  as  I  had  dreaded,  he  started  in  to  climb  the  tree — " 

"What,  the 
bull?" 

"  Of  course — 
who  else?" 

"But  a  bull 
can't  climb  a  tree." 

"He  can't, 
can't  he  ?  Since 
you  know  so  much 
about  it,  did  you 
ever  see  a  bull 
try?" 

"  Xo !  I  never 
dreamt  of  such  a 
thing.5' 

"Well,  then, 
what  is  the  use 
of  your  talking 
that  way,  then  ? 
Because  you  never 
saw  a  thing  done, 
is  that  any  reason 
why  it  can't  be 
done  ? " 

"Well,  all 
right  —  go  on. 
What  did  you 
do?" 

"The       bull  SUSPENDED    OPERATIONS. 

started  up,  and  got  along  well  for  about  ten  feet,  then  slipped 
and  slid  back.     I  breathed  easier.     He  tried  it  again — got 
5f 


66  UNDOUBTED    PROOFS. 

np  a  little  higher — slipped  again.  But  he  came  at  it  once 
more,  and  this  time  he  was  careful.  He  got  gradually 
higher  and  higher,  and  my  spirits  went  down  more  and 
more.  Up  he  came — an  inch  at  a  time — with  his  eyes 
hot,  and  his  tongue  hanging  out.  Higher  and  higher — 
hitched  his  foot  over  the  stump  of  a  limb,  and  looked  up,  as 
much  as  to  say,  'You  are  my  meat,  friend.'  Up  again- 
higher  and  higher,  and  getting  more  excited  the  closer  he  got. 
He  was  within  ten  feet  of  me !  I  took  a  long  breath, — and 
then  said  I,  'It  is  now  or  never.'  I  had  the  coil  of  the 
lariat  all  ready ;  I  paid  it  out  slowly,  till  it  hung  right  over 
his  head ;  all  of  a  sudden  I  let  go  of  the  slack,  and  the  slip- 
noose  fell  fairly  round  his  neck !  Quicker  than  lightning  I 
out  with  the  Allen  and  let  him  have  it  in  the  face.  It  was  an 
awful  roar,  and  must  have  scared  the  bull  out  of  his  senses. 
When  the  smoke  cleared  away,  there  he  was,  dangling  in  the 
air,  twenty  foot  from  the  ground,  and  going  out  of  one  con 
vulsion  into  another  faster  than  you  could  count!  I  didn't 
stop  to  count,  anyhow — I  shinned  down  the  tree  and  shot  for 
home." 

u  Bemis,  is  all  that  true,  just  as  you  have  stated  it  ? " 

"  I  wish  I  may  rot  in  my  tracks  and  die  the  death  of  a  dog 
if  it  isn't." 

"  Well,  we  can't  refuse  to  believe  it,  and  we  don't.  But 
if  there  were  some  proofs — 

"  Proofs !    Did  I  bring  back  my  lariat  ? " 

"No." 

"  Did  I  bring  back  my  horse  ? " 

"No." 

"Did  you  ever  see  the  bull  again?" 

"No." 

"  Well,  then,  what  more  do  you  want  ?  I  never  saw  any 
body  as  particular  as  you  are  about  a  little  thing  like  that." 

I  made  up  my  mind  that  if  this  man  was  not  a  liar  he  only 
missed  it  by  the  skin  of  his  teeth.  This  episode  reminds  me 
of  an  incident  of  my  brief  sojourn  in  Siam,  years  afterward. 
The  European  citizens  of  a  town  in  the  neighborhood  of  Bang- 


HOW    WE    "DRAWED    HIM    OUT."  (57 

Kok  had  a  prodigy  among  them  by  the  name  of  Eckert,  an 
Englishman — a  person  famous  for  the  number,  ingenuity  and 
imposing  magnitude  of  his  lies.  They  were  always  repeating 
his  most  celebrated  falsehoods,  and  always  trying  to  "  draw 
him  out "  before  strangers ;  but  they  seldom  succeeded.  Twice 
he  was  invited  to  the  house  where  I  was  visiting,  but  nothing 
could  seduce  him  into  a  specimen  lie.  One  day  a  planter 
named  Bascom,  an  influential  man,  and  a  proud  and  sometimes 
irascible  one,  invited  me  to  ride  over  with  him  and  call  on 
Eckert.  As  we  jogged  along,  said  he : 

"  Now,  do  you  know  where  the  fault  lies  ?  It  lies  in  putting 
Eckert  on  his  guard.  The  minute  the  boys  go  to  pumping  at 
Eckert  he  knows  perfectly  well  what  they  are  after,  and  of 
course  he  shuts  up  his  shell.  Anybody  might  know  he  would. 
But  when  we  get  there,  we  must  play  him  finer  than  that. 
Let  him  shape  the  conversation  to  suit  himself — let  him  drop 
it  or  change  it  whenever  he  wants  to.  Let  him  see  that  no 
body  is  trying  to  draw  him  out.  Just  let  him  have  his  own 
way.  He  will  soon  forget  himself  and  begin  to  grind  out  lies 
like  a  mill.  Don't  get  impatient — just  keep  quiet,  and  let  me 
play  him.  I  will  make  him  lie.  It  does  seem  to  me  that  the 
boys  must  be  blind  to  overlook  such  an  obvious  and  simple 
trick  as  that.1' 

Eckert  received  us  heartily — a  pleasant-spoken,  gentle- 
mannered  creature.  We  sat  in  the  veranda  an  hour,  sipping 
English  ale,  and  talking  about  the  king,  and  the  sacred  white 
elephant,  the  Sleeping  Idol,  and  all  manner  of  things ;  and  I 
noticed  that  my  comrade  never  led  the  conversation  himself 
or  shaped  it,  but  simply  followed  Eckert's  lead,  and  betrayed 
no  solicitude  and  no  anxiety  about  anything.  The  effect  was 
shortly  perceptible.  Eckert  began  to  grow  communicative; 
he  grew  more  and  more  at  his  ease,  and  more  and  more  talka 
tive  and  sociable.  Another  hour  passed  in  the  same  way,  and 
then  all  of  a  sudden  Eckert  said : 

"  Oh,  by  the  way!  I  came  near  forgetting.  I  have  got  a 
thing  here  to  astonish  you.  Such  a  thing  as  neither  you  nor 
any  other  man  ever  heard  of — I've  got  a  cat  that  will  eat  cocoa- 


68 


THE    CAT    THAT    EAT    COCOANUT. 


nut !  Common  green  cocoanut — and  not  only  eat  the  meat, 
but  drink  the  milk.  It  is  so — I'll  swear  to  it." 

A  quick  glance  from  Bascom — a  glance  that  I  under 
stood — then : 

"Why,  bless  my  soul,  I  never  heard  of  such  a  thing. 
Man,  it  is  impossible." 

"  I  knew  you  would  say  it.     I'll  fetch  the  cat." 

He  wrent  in  the  house.     Bascom  said : 

"  There — what  did  I  tell  you  ?  Now,  that  is  the  way  to 
handle  Eckert.  You  see,  I  have  petted  him  along  patiently, 
and  put  his  suspicions  to  sleep.  I  am  glad  we  came.  You 
tell  the  boys  about  it  when  you  go  back.  Cat  eat  a  cocoanut 
— oh,  my !  Now,  that  is  just  his  way,  exactly — he  will  tell  the 
absurd est  lie,  and  trust  to  luck  to  get  out  of  it  again.  Cat  eat 
a  cocoanut — the  innocent  fool !  " 


Eckert  approached  with  his  cat,  sure  enough. 

Bascom  smiled.     Said  he : 

"  I'll  hold  the  cat — you  bring  a  cocoanut." 


TRUTH    STRANGER    THAN    FICTION. 


69 


Eckert  split  one  open,  and  chopped  up  some  pieces.  Bas- 
com  smuggled  a  wink  to  me,  and  proffered  a  slice  of  the  fruit 
to  puss.  She  snatched  it,  swallowed  it  ravenously,  and  asked 
for  more ! 

We  rode  our  two  miles  in  silence,  and  wide  apart.  At 
least  I  was  silent,  though  Bascom  cuffed  his  horse  and  cursed 
him  a  good  deal,  notwithstanding  the  horse  was  behaving  well 
enough.  When  I  branched  off  homeward,  Bascom  said : 

"  Keep  the  horse  till  morning.  And — you  need  not  speak 
of  this foolishness  to  the  boys." 


OHAPTEE   VIII. 

IN  a  little  while  all  interest  was  taken  up  in  stretching  our 
necks  and  watching  for  the  "  pony-rider  " — the  fleet  mes 
senger  who  sped  across  the  continent  from  St.  Joe  to  Sacra 
mento,  carrying  letters  nineteen  hundred  miles  in  eight  days ! 
Think  of  that  for  perishable  horse  and  human  flesh  and  blood 
to  do !  The  pony-rider  was  usually  a  little  bit  of  a  man,  brim 
ful  of  spirit  and  endurance.  No  matter  what  time  of  the 
day  or  night  his  watch  came  on,  and  no  matter  whether  it  was 
winter  or  summer,  raining,  snowing,  hailing,  or  sleeting,  or 
whether  his  "  beat "  was  a  level  straight  road  or  a  crazy  trail 
over  mountain  crags  and  precipices,  or  whether  it  led  through 
peaceful  regions  or  regions  that  swarmed  writh  hostile  Indians, 
he  must  be  always  ready  to  leap  into  the  saddle  and  be  off  like 
the  wind  !  There  was  no  idling-time  for  a  pony-rider  on 
duty.  He  rode  fifty  miles  without  stopping,  by  daylight, 
moonlight,  starlight,  or  through  the  blackness  of  darkness — 
just  as  it  happened.  He  rode  a  splendid  horse  that  was  born 
for  a  racer  and  fed  and  lodged  like  a  gentleman ;  kept  him 
at  his  utmost  speed  for  ten  miles,  and  then,  as  he  came  crash 
ing  up  to  the  station  where  stood  two  men  holding  fast  a  fresh, 
impatient  steed,  the  transfer  of  rider  and  mail-bag  was  made 
in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  and  away  flew  the  eager  pair  and 
were  out  of  sight  before  the  spectator  could  get  hardly  the 
ghost  of  a  look.  Both  rider  and  horse  went  "  flying  light." 
The  rider's  dress  was  thin,  and  fitted  close  ;  he  wore  a  "  round 
about,"  and  a  skull-cap,  and  tucked  his  pantaloons  into  his 


THE    PONY    EXPRESS.  71 

boot-tops  like  a  race-rider.  He  carried  no  arms — he  carried 
nothing  that  was  not  absolutely  necessary,  for  even  the  post 
age  on  his  literary  freight  was  worth  jive  dollars  a  letter.  He 
got  but  little  frivo 
lous  correspondence 
to  carry  —  his  bag 
had  business  letters 
in  it,  mostly.  His 
horse  was  stripped 
of  all  unnecessary 
weight,  too.  He 
wore  a  little  wafer  of  a  racing-sad 
dle,  and  no  visible  blanket.  He 
wore  light  shoes,  or  none  at  all. 
The  little  flat  mail-pockets  strap 
ped  under  the  rider's  thighs  would  each  hold  about  the  bulk 
of  a  child's  primer.  They  held  many  and  many  an  important 
business  chapter  and  newspaper  letter,  but  these  were  written 
on  paper  as  airy  and  thin  as  gold-leaf,  nearly,  and  thus  bulk 
and  weight  were  economized.  The  stage-coach  traveled  about 
a  hundred  to  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  miles  a  day  (twenty- 
four  hours),  the  pony-rider  about  two  hundred  and  fifty.  There 
were  about  eighty  pony-riders  in  the  saddle  all  the  time,  night 
arid  day,  stretching  in  a  long,  scattering  procession  from  Mis 
souri  to  California,  forty  flying  eastward,  and  forty  toward  the 
west,  and  among  them  making  four  hundred  gallant  horses 
earn  a  stirring  livelihood  and  see  a  deal  of  scenery  every  single 
day  in  the  year. 

We  had  had  a  consuming  desire,  from  the  beginning,  to 
see  a  pony-rider,  but  somehow  or  other  all  that  passed  us  and 
all  that  met  us  managed  to  streak  by  in  the  night,  and  so  we 
heard  only  a  whiz  and  a  hail,  and  the  swift  phantom  of  the 
desert  was  gone  before  we  could  get  our  heads  out  of  the  win 
dows.  But  now  wre  were  expecting  one  along  every  moment, 
and  would  see  him  in  broad  daylight.  Presently  the  driver 
exclaims : 

"  HERE  HE  COMES  ! " 

Every  neck  is  stretched  further,  and   every  eye  strained 


72  GENUINE    ALKALI    WATER. 

wider.  Ajvay  across  the  endless  dead  level  of  the  prairie  a 
black  speck  appears  against  the  sky,  and  it  is  plain  that  it  moves. 
Well,  I  should  think  so !  In  a  second  or  two  it  becomes  a  horse 

and  rider,  rising 
and  falling,  ris 
ing  and  falling — 
sweeping  toward 
us  nearer  and  near 
er — growing  more 
and  more  distinct, 
more  and  more 
sharply  defined — • 
nearer  and  still 

CHANGING    HORSES.  ^^        aild        tllG 

flutter  of  the  hoofs 

comes  faintly  to  the  ear — another  instant  a  whoop  and  a  hur 
rah  from  our  upper  deck,  a  wave  of  the  rider's  hand,  but  no 
reply,  and  man  and  horse  burst  past  our  excited  faces,  and 
go  winging  away  like  a  belated  fragment  of  a  storm ! 

So  sudden  is  it  all,  and  so  like  a  flash  of  unreal  fancy,  that 
but  for  the  flake  of  white  foam  left  quivering  and  perishing  on 
a  mail-sack  after  the  vision  had  flashed  by  and  disappeared,  we 
might  have  doubted  whether  we  had  seen  any  actual  horse  and 
man  at  all,  maybe. 

We  rattled  through  Scott's  Bluffs  Pass,  by  and  by.  It  was 
along  here  somewhere  that  we  first  came  across  genuine  and 
unmistakable  alkali  water  in  the  road,  and  we  cordially  hailed 
it  as  a  first-class  curiosity,  and  a  thing  to  be  mentioned  with 
eclat  in  letters  to  the  ignorant  at  home.  This  water  gave  the 
road  a  soapy  appearance,  and  in  many  places  the  ground  looked 
as  if  it  had  been  whitewashed.  I  think  the  strange  alkali 
water  excited  us  as  much  as  any  wonder  we  had  come  upon 
yet,  and  I  know  we  felt  very  complacent  and  conceited,  and 
better  satisfied  with  life  after  we  had  added  it  to  our  list  of 
things  which  we  had  seen  and  some  other  people  had  not.  In 
a  small  way  we  were  the  same  sort  of  simpletons  as  those  who 
climb  unnecessarily  the  perilous  peaks  of  Mont  Blanc  and 


A    MAGNIFICENT    RIDE. 


73 


the  Matterhorn,  and  derive  no  pleasure  from  it  except  the  re 
flection  that  it  isn't  a  common  experience.  But  once  in  a 
while  one  of  those  parties  trips  and  comes  darting  down  the 
long  mountain-crags  in  a  sitting  posture,  making  the  crusted 
snow  smoke  behind  him,  flitting  from  bench  to  bench,  and 
from  terrace  to  terrace,  jarring  the  earth  where  he  strikes,  and 
still  glancing  and  flitting  011  again,  sticking  an  iceberg  into 
himself  every  now  and  then,  and  tearing  his  clothes,  snatching 
at  things  to  save  himself,  taking  hold  of  trees  and  fetching 
them  along  with  him,  roots  and  all,  starting  little  rocks  now 
and  then,  then  big  boulders,  then  acres  of  ice  and  snow  and 
patches  of  forest,  gath 
ering  and  still  'gath 
ering  as  he  goes, 
adding  and  still  add 
ing  to  his  massed  and 
sweeping  grandeur  as 
he  nears  a  three  thou 
sand-foot  precipice, 
till  at  last  he  waves 
his  hat  magnificently 
and  rides  into  eter 
nity  on  the  back  of  a 
raging  and  tossing 
avalanche ! 

This  is  all  very 
fine,  but  let  us  not  be 
carried  away  by  excitement,  but  ask  calmly,  how  does  this  per 
son  feel  about  it  in  his  cooler  moments  next  day,  with  six  or 
seven  thousand  feet  of  snow  and  stuff  on  top  of  him  ? 

We  crossed  the  sand  hills  near  the  scene  of  the  Indian 
mail  robbery  and  massacre  of  1856,  wherein  the  driver  and 
conductor  perished,  and  also  all  the  passengers  but  one,  it  was 
supposed ;  but  this  must  have  been  a  mistake,  for  at  different 
times  afterward  on  the  Pacific  coast  I  was  personally  ac 
quainted  with  a  hundred  and  thirty-three  or  four  people  who 
were  wounded  during  that  massacre,  and  barely  escaped  with 


HIDING    TUB    AVALANCHE. 


74:  AN    INDIAN    MASSACRE. 

their  lives.  There  was  no  doubt  of  the  truth  of  it — I  had  it 
from  their  own  lips.  One  of  these  parties  told  me  that  he 
kept  coming  across  arrow-heads  in  his  system  for  nearly  seven 
years  after  the  massacre ;  and  another  of  them  told  me  that  he 
was  stuck  so  literally  full  of  arrows  that  after  the  Indians 
were  gone  and  he  could  raise  up  and  examine  himself,  he 
could  not  restrain  his  tears,  for  his  clothes  were  completely 
ruined. 

The  most  trustworthy  tradition  avers,  however,  that  only 
one  man,  a  person  named  Babbitt,  survived  the  massacre,  and 
he  was  desperately  wounded.  He  dragged  himself  on  his 
hands  and  knee  (for  one  leg  was  broken)  to  a  station  several 
miles  away.  He  did  it  during  portions  of  two  nights,  lying 
concealed  one  day  and  part  of  another,  and  for  more  than 
forty  hours  suffering  unimaginable  anguish  from  hunger,  thirst 
and  bodily  pain.  The  Indians  robbed  the  coach  of  everything 
it  contained,  including  quite  an  amount  of  treasure. 


OHAPTEE    IX. 

TTTE  passed  Fort  Laramie  in  the  night,  and  on  the  seventh 
^  »  morning  out  we  found  ourselves  in  the  Black  Hills, 
with  Laramie  Peak  at  our  elbow  (apparently)  looming  vast 
and  solitary — a  deep,  dark,  rich  indigo  blue  in  hue,  so  por 
tentously  did  the  old  colossus  frown  under  his  beetling 
brows  of  storm-cloud.  He  was  thirty  or  forty  miles  away,  in 
reality,  but  he  only  seemed  removed  a  little  beyond  the  low 
ridge  at  our  right.  We  breakfasted  at  Horse-Shoe  Station, 
six  hundred  and  seventy-six  miles  out  from  St.  Joseph.  "We 
had  now  reached  a  hostile  Indian  country,  and  during  the 
afternoon  we  passed  Laparelle  Station,  and  enjoyed  great  dis 
comfort  all  the  time  we  were  in  the  neighborhood,  being 
aware  that  many  of  the  trees  we  dashed  by  at  arm's  length 
concealed  a  lurking  Indian  or  two.  During  the  preceding 
night  an  ambushed  savage  had  sent  a  bullet  through  the  pony- 
rider's  jacket,  but  he  had  ridden  on,  just  the  same,  because 
pony-riders  were  not  allowed  to  stop  and  inquire  into  such 
things  except  when  killed.  As  long  as  they  had  life  enough 
left  in  them  they  had  to  stick  to  the  horse  and  ride,  even  if 
the  Indians  had  been  waiting  for  them  a  week,  and  were  en 
tirely  out  of  patience.  About  two  hours  and  a  half  before  we 
arrived  at  Laparelle  Station,  the  keeper  in  charge  of  it  had 
fired  four  times  at  an  Indian,  but  he  said  with  an  injured  air 
that  the  Indian  had  "  skipped  around  so's  to  spile  everything 
-—and  ammunition's  blamed  skurse,  too."  The  most  natural 


AMONG    THE    INDIANS. 


inference  conveyed  by  his  manner  of  speaking  was,  that  in 
"  skipping  around,"  the  Indian  had  taken  an  unfair  advantage. 

The  coach  we  were 
in  had  a  neat  hole 
through  its  front — 
a  reminiscence  of 
its  last  trip  through 
this  region.  The 
bullet  that  made 
it  wounded  the 
driver  slightly,  but 
he  did  not  mind  it 
much.  He  said  the 
place  to  keep  a  man 
"  huffy  "  was  down 
on  the  Southern 
Overland,  among 
the  Apaches,  be 
fore  the  company 
moved  the  stage 
line  up  on  the  northern  route.  He  said  the  Apaches  used  to 
annoy  him  all  the  time  down  there,  and  that  he  came  as  near 
as  anything  to  starving  to  death  in  the  midst  of  abundance, 
because  they  kept  him  so  leaky  with  bullet  holes  that  he 
"  couldn't  hold  his  vittles."  This  person's  statement  were 
not  generally  believed. 

We  shut  the  blinds  down  very  tightly  that  first  night  in 
the  hostile  Indian  country,  and  lay  on  our  arms.  We  slept 
on  them  some,  but  most  of  the  time  we  only  lay  on  them. 
We  did  not  talk  much,  but  kept  quiet  and  listened.  It  was 
an  inky-black  night,  and  occasionally  rainy.  We  were  among 
woods  and  rocks,  hills  and  gorges — so  shut  in,  in  fact,  that 
when  we  peeped  through  a  chink  in  a  curtain,  we  could  dis 
cern  nothing.  The  driver  and  conductor  on  top  were  still, 
too,  or  only  spoke  at  long  intervals,  in  low  tones,  as  is  the 
way  of  men  in  the  midst  of  invisible  dangers.  We  listened 
to  rain-drops  pattering  on  the  roof;  and  the  grinding  of  the 


INDIAN  COUNTRY. 


A    DARK    DEED.  77 

wheels  through  the  muddy  gravel ;  and  the  low  wailing  of  the 
wind ;  and  all  the  time  we  had  that  absurd  sense  upon  us,  in 
separable  from  travel  at  night  in  a  close-curtained  vehicle,  the 
sense  of  remaining  perfectly  still  in  one  place,  notwithstand 
ing  the  jolting  and  swaying  of  the  vehicle,  the  trampling  of 
the  horses,  and  the  grinding  of  the  wheels.  We  listened  a 
long  time,  with  intent  faculties  and  bated  breath ;  every  time 
one  of  us  would  relax,  and  draw  a  long  sigh  of  relief  and 
start  to  say  something,  a  comrade  would  be  sure  to  utter  a 
sudden  "  Hark ! "  and-  instantly  the  experimenter  was  rigid 
and  listening  again.  So  the  tiresome  minutes  and  decades  of 
minutes  dragged  away,  until  at  last  our  tense  forms  filmed 
over  with  a  dulled  consciousness,  and  we  slept,  if  one  might 
call  such  a  condition  by  so  strong  a  name — for  it  was  a  sleep 
set  with  a  hair-trigger.  It  was  a  sleep  seething  and  teeming 
with  a  weird  and  distressful  confusion  of  shreds  and  fog-ends 
of  dreams — a  sleep  that  was  a  chaos.  Presently,  dreams  and 
sleep  and  the  sullen  hush  of  the  night  were  startled  by  a  ring 
ing  report,  and  cloven  by  such  a  long,  wild,  agonizing  shriek ! 
Then  we  heard — ten  steps  from  the  stage — 

"  Help !  help !  help !  "     [It  was  our  driver's  voice.] 
"  Kill  him  !     Kill  him  like  a  dog ! " 
"  I'm  being  murdered  !     Will  no  man  lend  me  a  pistol  1 " 
"  Look  out !  head  him  off!  head  him  off! " 
[Two  pistol  shots  ;  a  confusion  of  voices  and  the  trampling 
of  many  feet,  as  if  a  crowd  were  closing  and  surging  together 
around  some  object ;  several  heavy,  dull  blows,  as  with  a  club  ; 
a  voice  that  said  appealingly,  "  Don't,  gentlemen,  please  don't 
—I'm  a  dead  man  ! "     Then  a  fainter  groan,  and  another  blow, 
and  away  sped  the  stage  into  the  darkness,  and  left  the  grisly 
mystery  behind  us.] 

What  a  startle  it  was*!  Eight  seconds  would  amply  cover 
the  time  it  occupied — maybe  even  five  would  do  it.  We 
only  had  time  to  plunge  at  a  curtain  and  unbuckle  and  unbut 
ton  part  of  it  in  an  awkward  and  hindering  flurry,  when  our 
whip  cracked  sharply  overhead,  and  we  went  rumbling  and 
thundering  away,  down  a  mountain  "  grade. " 


78  POOR    DISCRETION    AND    FATAL    RESULTS. 

"We  fed  on  that  mystery  the  rest  of  the  night — what  was 
left  of  it,  for  it  was  waning  fast.  It  had  to  remain  a  present 
mystery,  for  all  we  could  get  from  the  conductor  in  answer  to 
our  hails  was  something  that  sounded,  through  the  clatter  of 
the  wheels,  like  "  Tell  you  in  the  morning ! " 

So  we  lit  our  pipes  and  opened  the  corner  of  a  curtain  for  a 
chimney,  and  lay  there  in  the  dark,  listening  to  each  other's 
story  of  how  he  first  felt  and  how  many  thousand  Indians  he 
first  thought  had  hurled  themselves  upon  us,  and  what  his 
remembrance  of  the  subsequent  sounds-  was,  and  the  order  of 
their  occurrence.  And  we  theorized,  too,  but  there  was  never 
a  theory  that  would  account  for  our  driver's  voice  being  out 
there,  nor  yet  account  for  his  Indian  murderers  talking  such 
good  English,  if  they  were  Indians. 

So  we  chatted  and  smoked  the  rest  of  the  night  comfort 
ably  away,  our  boding  anxiety  being  somehow  marvelously 
dissipated  by  the  real  presence  of  something  to  be  anxious 
about. 

We  never  did  get  much  satisfaction  about  that  dark  occur 
rence.  All  that  we  could  make  out  of  the  odds  and  ends  of 
the  information  we  gathered  in  the  morning,  was  that  the 
disturbance  occurred  at  a  station;  that  we  changed  drivers 
there,  and  that  the  driver  that  got  off  there  had  been  talking 
roughly  about  some  of  the  outlaws  that  infested  the  region 
("  for  there  wasn't  a  man  around  there  but  had  a  price  on  his 
head  and  didn't  dare  show  himself  in  the  settlements,"  the 
conductor  said) ;  he  had  talked  roughly  about  these  characters, 
and  ought  to  have  "  drove  up  there  with  his  pistol  cocked  and 
ready  on  the  seat  alongside  of  him,  and  begun  business  him 
self,  because  any  softy  would  know  they  would  be  laying  for 
him." 

That  was  all  we  could  gather,  and  we  could  see  that  nei 
ther  the  conductor  nor  the  new  driver  were  much  concerned 
about  the  matter.  They  plainly  had  little  respect  for  a  man  who 
would  deliver  offensive  opinions  of  people  and  then  be  so  sim 
ple  as  to  come  into  their  presence  unprepared  to  "  back  his  judg 
ment,"  as  they  pleasantly  phrased  the  killing  of  any  fellow-being 


BLOODY,   DANGEROUS,  YET   VALUABLE    CITIZEN.   79 

who  did  not  like  said  opinions.  And  likewise  they  plainly  had  a 
contempt  for  the  man's  poor  discretion  in  venturing  to  rouse 
the  wrath  of  such  utterly  reckless  wild  beasts  as  those  outlaws 
— and  the  conductor  added : 

"  I  tell  you  it's  as  much  as  Slade  himself  wants  to  do ! " 
This  remark  created  an  entire  revolution  in  my  curiosity. 
I  cared  nothing  now  about  the  Indians,  and  even  lost  interest 
in  the  murdered  driver.     There  was  such  magic  in  that  name, 
SLADE  !     Day  or  night,  now,  I  stood  always  ready  to  drop  any 
subject  in  hand,  to  listen  to  something  new  about  Slade  and 
his  ghastly  exploits.     Even  before  we  got  to  Overland  City, 
we  had  begun  to  hear  about  Slade  and  his  "  division  "  (for  he 
was  a  "  division-agent ")  on  the  Overland ;  and  from  the  hour 
we  had  left  Overland  City  we  had  heard  drivers  and  conduc 
tors  talk  about  only  three  things — "  Californy,"  the  Nevada 
silver  mines,  and  this  desperado  Slade.     And  a  deal  the  most 
of  the  talk  was  about  Slade.     We  had  gradually  come  to  have 
a  realizing  sense  of  the  fact  that  Slade  was  a  man  whose  heart :] 
and  hands  and  soul  were  steeped  in  the  blood  of  offenders  o 
against  his  dignity ;  a  man  who  awfully  avenged  all  injuries, 
affronts,  insults  or  slights,  of  whatever  kind — on  the  spot  if  he 
could,  years  afterward  if  lack  of  earlier  opportunity  compelled 
it ;  a  man  whose  hate  tortured  him  day  and  night  till  ven 
geance  appeased  it — and  not  an  ordinary  vengeance  either,  \ 
but  his  enemy's  absolute  death — nothing  less ;  a  man  whose ' 
face  would  light  up  with  a  terrible  joy  when  he  surprised  a  / 
foe  and  had  him  at  a  disadvantage.     A  high  and  efficient 
servant  of  the  Overland,  an  outlaw  among  outlaws  and  yet 
their  relentless  scourge,  Slade  was  at  once  the  most  bloody,  I 
the  most  dangerous  and  the  most  valuable  citizen  that  inhab-j 
ited  the  savage  fastnesses  of  the  mountains. 


OHAPTEE   X. 

and  truly,  two  thirds  of  the  talk  of  drivers  and 
JL\)  conductors  had  been  about  this  man  Slade,  ever  since 
the  day  before  we  reached  Julesburg.  In  order  that  the  east 
ern  reader  may  have  a  clear  conception  of  what  a  Rocky  Moun 
tain  desperado  is,  in  his  highest  state  of  development,  I  will 
reduce  all  this  mass  of  overland  gossip  to  one  straightforward 
narrative,  and  present  it  in  the  following  shape : 

Slade  was  born  in  Illinois,  of  good  parentage.  At  about 
twenty-six  years  of  age  he  killed  a  man  in  a  quarrel  and  fled 
the  country.  At  St.  Joseph,  Missouri,  he  joined  one  of  the 
early  California-bound  emigrant  trains,  and  was  given  the  post 
of  train-master.  One  day  on  the  plains  he  had  an  angry  dis 
pute  with  one  of  his  wagon-drivers,  and  both  drew  their 
revolvers.  But  the  driver  was  the  quicker  artist,  and  had  his 
weapon  cocked  first.  So  Slade  said  it  was  a  pity  to  waste  life 
on  so  small  a  matter,  and  proposed  that  the  pistols  be  thrown 
on  the  ground  and  the  quarrel  settled  by  a  fist-fight.  The 
unsuspecting  driver  agreed,  and  threw  down  his  pistol — where 
upon  Slade  laughed  at  his  simplicity,  and  shot  him  dead ! 

He  made  his  escape,  and  lived  a  wild  life  for  awhile,  divid 
ing  his  time  between  fighting  Indians  and  avoiding  an  Illinois 
sheriff,  who  had  been  sent  to  arrest  him  for  his  first  murder. 
It  is  said  that  in  one  Indian  battle  he  killed  three  savages  with 
his  own  hand,  and  afterward  cut  their  ears  off  and  sent  them, 
with  his  compliments,  to  the  chief  of  the  tribe. 

Slade  soon  gained  a  name  for  fearless  resolution,  and  this 


SLADE    AS    DIVISION-AGENT. 


81 


was  sufficient  merit  to  procure  for  him  the  important  post  of 
overland  division-agent  at  Julesburg,  in  place  of  Mr.  Jules, 
removed.  For  some  time  previously,  the  company's  horses 
had  been  frequent 
ly  stolen,  and  the 
coaches  delayed,  by 
gangs  of  outlaws, 
who  were  wont  to 
laugh  at  the  idea  of 
any  man's  having 
the  temerity  to  re 
sent  such  outrages. 
Slade  resented  them 
promptly.  The  out 
laws  soon  found  that 
the  new  agent  was  a 
man  who  did  not 
fear  anything  that 
breathed  the  breath 
of  life.  He  made 
short  work  of  all 
offenders.  The  re 
sult  was  that  delays 
ceased,  the  compa 
ny's  property  was  let 
alone,  and  no  matter 

T  -i  j  A.  PROPOSED  FIST-FIGHT. 

what    happened    or 

who  suffered,  Blade's  coaches  went  through,  every  time! 
True,  in  order  to  bring  about  this  wholesome  change,  Slade 
had  to  kill  several  men — some  say  three,  others  say  four,  and 
others  six — but  the  world  was  the  richer  for  their  loss.  The 
iirst  prominent  difficulty  he  had  was  with  the  ex-agent  Jules, 
who  bore  the  reputation  of  being  a  reckless  and  desperate 
man  himself.  Jules  hated  Slade  for  supplanting  him,  and  a 
good  fair  occasion  for  a  fight  was  all  he  was  waiting  for.  By 
and  by  Slade  dared  to  employ  a  man  whom  Jules  had  once 
discharged.  Next,  Slade  seized  a  team  of  stage-horses  which 

6t 


82    SLADE    AND    JULES    EXCHANGING    COURTESIES. 


he  accused  Jules  of  having  driven  off  and  hidden  somewhere 
for  his  own  use.  "War  was  declared,  and  for  a  day  or  two  the 
two  men  walked  warily  about  the  streets,  seeking  each  other, 
Jules  armed  with  a  double-barreled  shot  gun,  and  Slade  with 
his  history-creating  revolver.  Finally,  as  Slade  stepped  into  a 
store,  Jules  poured  the  contents  of  his  gun  into  him  from  be 
hind  the  door. 
Slade  was 
pluck,  and 
I  Jules  got  sev 
eral  bad  pistol 
wounds 


n 

return.  Then 
both  men  fell, 
and  were  car 
ried  to  their 
respective 
lodgings,  both 
swearing  that 
better  aim 
should  do  deadlier  work 
next  time.  Both  were  bed 
ridden  a  long  time,  but  Jules 
got  on  his  feet  first,  and 
gathering  his  possessions  to 
gether,  packed  them  on  a 
couple  of  mules,  and  fled 
to  the  Rocky  Mountains  to 
gather  strength  in  safety 
against  the  day  of  reckoning. 
For  many  months  he  was  not  seen  or  heard  of,  and  was  grad 
ually  dropped  out  of  the  remembrance  of  all  save  Slade  him 
self.  But  Slade  was  not  the  man  to  forget  him.  On  the  con 
trary,  common  report  said  that  Slade  kept  a  reward  standing 
for  his  capture,  dead  or  alive ! 

After  awhile,  seeing  that  Slade's  energetic  administration 
had  restored  peace  and  order  to  one  of  the  worst  divisions  of 


FROM    BEHIND    THE    DOOR. 


SUMMARY    JUSTICE    EXECUTED.  83 

the  road,  the  overland  stage  company  transferred  him  to  the 
Rocky  Ridge  division  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  to  see  if  he 
could  perform  a  like  miracle  there.  It  was  the  very  paradise 
of  outlaws  and  desperadoes.  There  was  absolutely  no  sem 
blance  of  law  there.  Violence  was  the  rule.  Force  was  the 
only  recognized  authority.  The  commonest  misunderstandings 
were  settled  on  the  spot  with  the  revolver  or  the  knife.  Mur 
ders  were  done  in  open  day,  and  with  sparkling  frequency,  and 
nobody  thought  of  inquiring  into  them.  It  was  considered 
that  the  parties  who  did  the  killing  had  their  private  reasons 
for  it;  for  other  people  to  meddle  would  have  been  looked 
upon  as  indelicate.  After  a  murder,  all  that  Rocky  Mountain 
etiquette  required  of  a  spectator  was,  that  he  should  help  the 
gentleman  bury  his  game — otherwise  his  churlishness  would 
surely  be  remembered  against  him  the  first  time  he  killed 
a  man  himself  and  needed  a  neighborly  turn  in  interring 
him. 

Slade  took  up  his  residence  sweetly  and  peacefully  in  the 
midst  of  this  hive  of  horse-thieves  and  assassins,  and  the  very 
first  time  one  of  them  aired  his  insolent  swaggerings  in  his 
presence  he  shot  him  dead !  He  began  a  raid  on  the  outlaws, 
and  in  a  singularly  short  space  of  time  he  had  completely 
stopped  their  depredations  on  the  stage  stock,  recovered  a  large 
number  of  stolen  horses,  killed  several  of  the  worst  despera 
does  of  the  district,  and  gained  such  a  dread  ascendancy  over 
the  rest  that  they  respected  him,  admired  him,  feared  him, 
obeyed  him  !  He  wrought  the  same  marvelous  change  in  the 
ways  of  the  community  that  had  marked  his  administration  at 
Overland  City.  He  captured  two  men  who  had  stolen  over 
land  stock,  and  with  his  own  hands  he  hanged  them.  He  was 
supreme  judge  in  his  district,  and  he  was  jury  and  executioner 
likewise — and  not  only  in  the  case  of  offences  against  his  em 
ployers,  but  against  passing  emigrants  as  well.  On  one  occa 
sion  some  emigrants  had  their  stock  lost  or  stolen,  and  told 
Slade,  who  chanced  to  visit  their  camp.  With  a  single  com 
panion  he  rode  to  a  ranch,  the  owners  of  which  he  suspected, 


84  ACTS    OF    CRUELTY    PERPETRATED. 

and  opening  the  door,  commenced  firing,  killing  three,  and 
wounding  the  fourth. 

From  a  bloodthirstily  interesting  little  Montana  book  *  I 
take  this  paragraph : 

While  on  the  road,  Slade  held  absolute  sway.  He  would  ride  down  to 
a  station,  get  into  a  quarrel,  turn  the  house  out  of  windows,  and  maltreat 
the  occupants  most  cruelly.  The  unfortunates  had  no  means  of  redress,  and 


BLADE    AS    EXECUTIONER. 

were  compelled  to  recuperate  as  best  they  couid.  On  one  of  these  occasions, 
it  is  said  he  killed  the  father  of  the  fine  little  half-breed  boy  Jemmy,  whom 
he  adopted,  and  who  lived  with  his  widow  after  his  execution.  Stories  of 
Slade's  hanging  men,  and  of  innumerable  assaults,  shootings,  stabbings 
and  beatings,  in  which  he  was  a  principal  actor,  form  part  of  the  legends 
of  the  stage  line.  As  for  minor  quarrels  and  shootings,  it  is  absolutely  cer 
tain  that  a  minute  history  of  Slade's  life  would  be  one  long  record  of  such 
practices. 


*  "  The  Vigilantes  of  Montana,"  by  Prof.  Thos.  J.  Dimsdale. 


A    DOOMED    WHISKY    SELLER. 


85 


Slade  was  a  matchless  marksman  with  a  navy  revolver. 
The  legends  say  that  one  morning  at  Rocky  Ridge,  when  he  was 
feeling  comfortable,  he  saw  a  man  approaching  who  had  of 
fended  him  some  days  before — observe  the  fine  memory  he 
had  for  matters  like  that — and,  "  Gentlemen,"  said  Slade, 
drawing,  "  it  is  a  good  twenty-yard  shot — I'll  clip  the  third 
button  on  his  coat ! "  Which  he  did.  The  bystanders  all 
admired  it.  And  they  all  attended  the  funeral,  too. 

On  one  occasion  a  man  who  kept  a  little  whisky-shelf  at 
the  station  did  something  which  angered  Slade — and  went 
and  made  his  will.  A  day  or  two  afterward  Slade  came  in 


AN     UNPLEASANT    VIEW. 


and  called  for  some  brandy.  The  man  reached  under  the 
counter  (ostensibly  to  get  a  bottle — possibly  to  get  something 
else),  but  Slade  smiled  upon  him  that  peculiarly  bland  and 
satisfied  smile  of  his  which  the  neighbors  had  long  ago  learned 
to  recognize  as  a  death-warrant  in  disguise,  and  told  him  to 


86         BLADE  RELEASED  BY  HIS  WIFE. 

"none  of  that! — pass  out  the  high-priced  article."  So  the 
poor  bar-keeper  had  to  turn  his  back  and  get  the  high-priced 
brandy  from  the  shelf;  and  when  he  faced  around  again  he 
was  looking  into  the  muzzle  of  Blade's  pistol.  "  And  the  next 
instant,"  added  my  informant,  impressively,  "  he  was  one  of 
the  deadest  men  that  ever  lived." 

The  stage-drivers  and  conductors  told  us  that  sometimes 
Slade  would  leave  a  hated  enemy  wholly  unmolested,  un 
noticed  and  unmentioned,  for  weeks  together — had  done  it 
once  or  twice  at  any  rate.  And  some  said  they  believed  he 
did  it  in  order  to  lull  the  victims  into  unwatchfulness,  so  that 
he  could  get  the  advantage  of  them,  and  others  said  they  be 
lieved  he  saved  up  an  enemy  that  way,  just  as  a  schoolboy 
saves  up  a  cake,  and  made  the  pleasure  go  as  far  as  it  would 
by  gloating  over  the  anticipation.  One  of  these  cases  was 
that  of  a  Frenchman  who  had  offended  Slade.  To  the  sur 
prise  of  everybody  Slade  did  not  kill  him  on  the  spot,  but  let 
him  alone  for  a  considerable  time.  Finally,  however,  he  went 
to  the  Frenchman's  house  very  late  one  night,  knocked,  and 
when  his  enemy  opened  the  door,  shot  him  dead — pushed  the 
corpse  inside  the  door  with  his  foot,  set  the  house  on  fire  and 
burned  up  the  dead  man,  his  widow  and  three  children !  I 
heard  this  story  from  several  different  people,  and  they  evi 
dently  believed  what  they  were  saying.  It  may  be  true,  and 
it  may  not.  "  Give  a  dog  a  bad  name,"  etc. 

Slade  was  captured,  once,  by  a  party  of  men  who  intended 
to  lynch  him.  They  disarmed  him,  and  shut  him  up  in  a 
strong  log-house,  and  placed  a  guard  over  him.  He  prevailed 
on  his  captors  to  send  for  his  wife,  so  that  he  might  have  a  last 
interview  with  her.  She  was  a  brave,  loving,  spirited  woman. 
She  jumped  on  a  horse  and  rode  for  life  and  death.  When 
she  arrived  they  let  her  in  without  searching  her,  and  before 
the  door  could  be  closed  she  whipped  out  a  couple  of  revolvers, 
and  she  and  her  lord  marched  forth  defying  the  party.  And 
then,  under  a  brisk  fire,  they  mounted  double  and  galloped 
away  unharmed ! 

In  the  fulness  of  time  Slade's  myrmidons  captured  his 


SLADE    CAPTURES    AN    OLD    ENEMY.  87 

ancient  enemy  Jules,  whom  they  found  in  a  well-chosen 
hiding-place  in  the  remote  fastnesses  of  the  mountains,  gaining 
a  precarious  livelihood  with  his  rifle.  They  brought  him  to 
Rocky  Ridge,  bound  hand  and  foot,  and  deposited  him  in  the 
middle  of  the  cattle-yard  with  his  back  against  a  post.  It  is 
said  that  the  pleasure  that  lit  Blade's  face  when  he  heard  of  it 
was  something  fearful  to  contemplate.  He  examined  his  ene 
my  to  see  that  he  was  securely  tied,  and  then  went  to  bed, 
content  to  wait  till  morning  before  enjoying  the  luxury  of 
killing  him.  Jules  spent  the  night  in  the  cattle-yard,  and  it  is 
a  region  where  warm  nights  are  never  known.  In  the  morn 
ing  Slade  practised  on  him  with  his  revolver,  nipping  the  flesh 
here  and  there,  and  occasionally  clipping  off  a  finger,  while 
Jules  begged  him  to  kill  him  outright  and  put  him  out  of  his 
misery.  Finally  Slade  reloaded,  and  walking  up  close  to  his 
victim,  made  some  characteristic  remarks  and  then  dispatched 
him.  The  body  lay  there  half  a  day,  nobody  venturing  to 
touch  it  without  orders,  and  then  Slade  detailed  a  party  and 
assisted  at  the  burial  himself.  But  he  first  cut  oif  the  dead 
man's  ears  and  put  them  in  his  vest  pocket,  where  he  carried 
them  for  some  time  with  great  satisfaction.  That  is  the  story 
as  I  have  frequently  heard  it  told  and  seen  it  in  print  in  Cali 
fornia  newspapers.  It  is  doubtless  correct  in  all  essential  par 
ticulars. 

In  due  time  we  rattled  up  to  a  stage-station,  and  sat  down 
to  breakfast  with  a  half-savage,  half-civilized  company  of 
armed  and  bearded  mountaineers,  ranchmen  and  station  em 
ployees.  The  most  gentlemanly-appearing,  quiet  and  affable 
officer  we  had  yet  found  along  the  road  in  the  Overland  Com 
pany's  service  was  the  person  who  sat  at  the  head  of  the  table, 
at  my  elbow.  Never  youth  stared  and  shivered  as  I  did  when 
I  heard  them  call  him  SLADE  ! 

Here  was  romance,  and  I  sitting  face  to  face  with  it  !— 
looking  upon  it — touching  it — hobnobbing  with  it,  as  it  were ! 
Here,  right  by  my  side,  was  the  actual  ogre  who,  in  fights  and 
brawls  and  various  ways,  had  taken  the  lives  of  twenty-six 
human  beings,  or  all  men  lied  about  him !  I  suppose  1  was 


88 


SLADE  AT  THE  BREAKFAST  TABLE. 


the  proudest  stripling  that  ever  traveled  to  see  strange  lands 
and  wonderful  people. 

He  was  so  friendly  and  so  gentle-spoken  that  I  warmed  to 
him  in  spite  of  his  awful  history.  It  was  hardly  possible  to  re 
alize  that  this  pleasant  person  was  the  pitiless  scourge  of  the 
outlaws,  the  raw-head-and-bloody-bones  the  nursing  mothers 
of  the  mountains  terrified  their  children  with.  And  to  this  day 
I  can  remember  nothing  remarkable  about  Slade  except  that 
his  face  was  rather  broad  across  the  cheek  bones,  and  that  the 
cheek  bones  were  low  and  the  lips  peculiarly  thin  and  straight. 
But  that  was  enough  to  leave  something  of  an  eifect  upon  me, 
for  since  then  I  seldom  see  a  face  possessing  those  characteristics 
without  fancying  that  the  owner  of  it  is  a  dangerous  man. 
The  coffee  ran  out.  At  least  it  was  reduced  to  one  tin- 
cup  ful,  and 
Slade  was 
about  to  take 
it  when  he  saw 
that  my  cup 
was  empty. 
He  politely  of 
fered  to  fill  it, 
but  although 
I  wanted  it, 
I  politely  de 
clined.  I  was 
afraid  he  had 
not  killed  any- 
b  o  d  y  that 
morning,  and 
might  be  need 
ing  diversion. 
But  still  with 

firm  politeness  he  insisted  on  filling  my  cup,  and  said  I  had 
traveled  all  night  and  better  deserved  it  than  he — and  while 
he  talked  he  placidly  poured  the  fluid,  to  the  last  drop.  I 
thanked  him  and  drank  it,  but  it  gave  me  no  comfort,  for  I 


UNAPPRECIATED    POLITENESS. 


A    SATISFACTORY    LEAVE-TAKING. 


89 


could  not  feel  sure  that  he  would  not  be  sorry,  presently,  that 
he  had  given  it  away,  and  proceed  to  kill  me  to  distract  his 
thoughts  from  the  loss.  But  nothing  of  the  kind  occurred. 
We  left  him  with  only  twenty-six  dead  people  to  account 
for,  and  I  felt  a  tranquil  satisfaction  in  the  thought  that  in 
so  judiciously  taking  care  of  No.  1  at  that  breakfast-table 
I  had  pleasantly  escaped  being  No.  27.  Slade  came  out  to 
the  coach  and  saw  us  off,  first  ordering  certain  rearrangements 
of  the  mail-bags  for  our  comfort,  and  then  we  took  leave  of 
him,  satisfied  that  we  should  hear  of  him  again,  some  day,  and 
wondering  in  what  connection. 


A 


OHAPTEE   XI. 

KD  sure  enough,  two  or  three  years  afterward,  we  did 
hear  of  him  again.  News  came  to  the  Pacific  coast 
that  the  Vigilance  Committee  in  Montana  (whither  Slade  had 
removed  from  Rocky  Ridge)  had  hanged  him.  I  find  an 
account  of  the  affair  in  the  thrilling  little  book  I  quoted  a 
paragraph  from  in  the  last  chapter — "  The  Vigilantes  of  Mon 
tana  ;  being  a  Reliable  Account  of  the  Capture,  Trial  and 
Execution  of  Henry  Plummer's  Notorious  Road  Agent  Band : 
By  Prof.  Thos.  J.  Dimsdale,  Virginia  City,  M.  T."  Mr. 
Dimsdale's  chapter  is  well  worth  reading,  as  a  specimen  of 
how  the  people  of  the  frontier  deal  with  criminals  when  the 
courts  of  law  prove  inefficient.  Mr.  Dimsdale  makes  two  re 
marks  about  Slade,  both  of  which  are  accurately  descriptive, 
and  one  of  which  is  exceedingly  picturesque :  "  Those  who 
saw  him  in  his  natural  state  only,  would  pronounce  him  to  be 
a  kind  husband,  a  most  hospitable  host  and  a  courteous  gentle 
man  ;  on  the  contrary,  those  who  met  him  when  maddened 
with  liquor  and  surrounded  by  a  gang  of  armed  roughs,  would 
pronounce  him  a  fiend  incarnate."  And  this:  "From  Fort 
Kearney,  west,  he  was  feared  a  great  deal  more  than  the  Al 
mighty"  For  compactness,  simplicity  and  vigor  of  expres 
sion,  I  will  "  back  "  that  sentence  against  anything  in  literature. 
Mr.  Dimsdale's  narrative  is  as  follows.  In  all  places  where 
italics  occur,  they  are  mine : 

After  the  execution  of  the  five  men  on  the  14th  of  January,  the  Vigi 
lantes  considered  that  their  work  was  nearly  ended.     They  had  freed  the 


BLADE    IN    MONTANA.  91 

country  of  highwaymen  and  murderers  to  a  great  extent,  and  they  deter 
mined  that  in  the  absence  of  the  regular  civil  authority  they  would  estab. 
lish  a  People's  Court  where  all  offenders  should  be  tried  by  judge  and  jury. 
This  was  the  nearest  approach  to  social  order  that  the  circumstances  per 
mitted,  and,  though  strict  legal  authority  was  wanting,  yet  the  people  were 
firmly  determined  to  maintain  its  efficiency,  and  to  enforce  its  decrees.  It 
may  here  be  mentioned  that  the  overt  act  which  was  the  last  round  on  the 
fatal  ladder  leading  to  the  scaffold  on  which  Slade  perished,  was  the  tearing 
in  pieces  and  stamping  upon  a  writ  of  this  court,  followed  by  his  arrest  of 
the  Judge,  Alex.  Davis,  by  authority  of  a  presented  Derringer,  and  with  Jiis 
own  hands. 

J.  A.  Slade  was  himself,  we  have  been  informed,  a  Vigilante ;  he  openly 
boasted  of  it,  and  said  he  knew  all  that  they  knew.  He  was  never  accused, 
or  even  suspected,  of  either  murder  or  robbery,  committed  in  this  Territory 
(the  latter  crime  was  never  laid  to  his  charge,  in  any  place) ;  but  that  he 
had  killed  several  men  in  other  localities  was  notorious,  and  his  bad  repu 
tation  in  this  respect  was  a  most  powerful  argument  in  determining  his 
fate,  when  he  was  finally  arrested  for  the  offence  above  mentioned.  On 
returning  from  Milk  River  he  became  more  and  more  addicted  to  drinking, 
until  at  last  it  was  a  common  feat  for  him  and  his  friends  to  "  take  the 
town."  He  and  a  couple  of  his  dependents  might  often  be  seen  on  one 
horse,  galloping  through  the  streets,  shouting  and  yelling,  firing  revolvers, 
etc.  On  many  occasions  he  would  ride  his  horse  into  stores,  break  up 
bars,  toss  the  scales  out  of  doors  and  use  most  insulting  language  to  par 
ties  present.  Just  previous  to  the  day  of  his  arrest,  he  had  given  a  fearful 
beating  to  one  of  his  followers  ;  but  such  was  his  influence  over  them  that 
the  man  wept  bitterly  at  the  gallows,  and  begged  for  his  life  with  all  his 
power.  It  had  become  quite  common,  when  Slade  was  on  a  spree,  far  the 
shop-keepers  and  citizens  to  close  the  stores  and  put  out  all  the  lights  ;  being 
fearful  of  some  outrage  at  his  hands.  For  his  wanton  destruction  of  goods 
and  furniture,  he  was  always  ready  to  pay,  when  sober,  if  he  had  money ; 
but  there  were  not  a  few  who  regarded  payment  as  small  satisfaction  for 
the  outrage,  and  these  men  were  his  personal  enemies. 

From  time  to  time  Slade  received  warnings  from  men  that  he  well 
knew  would  not  deceive  him,  of  the  certain  end  of  his  conduct.  There 
was  not  a  moment,  for  weeks  previous  to  his  arrest,  in  which  the  public 
did  not  expect  to  hear  of  some  bloody  outrage.  The  dread  of  his  very 
name,  and  the  presence  of  the  armed  band  of  hangers-on  who  followed  him 
alone  prevented  a  resistance  which  must  certainly  have  ended  in  the  instant 
murder  or  mutilation  of  the  opposing  party. 

Slade  was  frequently  arrested  by  order  of  the  court  whose  organization 
we  have  described,  and  had  treated  it  with  respect  by  paying  one  or  two 
fines  and  promising  to  pay  the  rest  when  he  had  money ;  but  in  the  transac 
tion  that  occurred  at  this  crisis,  he  forgot  even  this  caution,  and  goaded  by 
passion  and  the  hatred  of  restraint,  he  sprang  into  the  embrace  of  death. 

Slade  had  been  drunk  and  "  cutting  up  "  all  night.  He  and  his  companions 


92 


IN    CUSTODY    OF    THE    "VIGILANTES. 


had  made  the  town  a  perfect  hell.  In  the  morning,  J.  M.  Fox,  the  sheriff, 
met  him,  arrested  him,  took  him  into  court  and  commenced  reading  a  war 
rant  that  he  had  for  his  arrest,  by  way  of  arraignment.  He  became  uncon 
trollably  furious,  and  seizing  the  writ,  he  tore  it  up,  threw  it  on  the  ground 


SLADE    IN    COURT. 

and  stamped  upon  it.  The  clicking  of  the  locks  of  his  companions'  revolv 
ers  was  instantly  heard,  and  a  crisis  was  expected.  The  sheriff  did  not 
attempt  his  retention  ;  but  being  at  least  as  prudent  as  he  was  valiant,  he 
succumbed,  leaving  Slade  the  master  of  the  situation  and  the  conqueror 
and  ruler  of  the  courts,  law  and  law-makers.  This  was  a  declaration  of 
war,  and  was  so  accepted.  The  Vigilance  Committee  now  felt  that  the 
question  of  social  order  and  the  preponderance  of  the  law-abiding  citizens 
had  then  and  there  to  be  decided.  They  knew  the  character  of  Slade,  and 
they  were  well  aware  that  they  must  submit  to  his  rule  without  murmur, 
or  else  that  he  must  be  dealt  with  in  such  fashion  as  would  prevent  his 
being  able  to  wreak  his  vengeance  on  the  committee,  who  could  never  have 
hoped  to  live  in  the  Territory  secure  from  outrage  or  death,  and  who  could 


THE    MINERS    "ON    BUSINESS."  93 

never  leave  it  without  encountering  his  friends,  whom  his  victory  would 
have  emboldened  and  stimulated  to  a  pitch  that  would  have  rendered 
them  reckless  of  consequences.  The  day  previous  he  had  ridden  into 
Dorris's  store,  and  on  being  requested  to  leave,  he  drew  his  revolver 
and  threatened  to  kill  the  gentleman  who  spoke  to  him.  Another  saloon 
he  had  led  his  horse  into,  and  buying  a  bottle  of  wine,  he  tried  to  make 
the  animal  drink  it.  This  was  not  considered  an  uncommon  performance, 
as  he  had  often  entered  saloons  and  commenced  firing  at  the  lamps,  caus 
ing  a  wild  stampede. 

A  leading  member  of  the  committee  met  Slade,  and  informed  him  in  the 
quiet,  earnest  manner  of  one  who  feels  the  importance  of  what  he  is  saying : 

"  Slade,  get  your  horse  at  once,  and  go  home,  or  there  will  be to  pay." 

Slade  started  and  took  a  long  look,  with  his  dark  and  piercing  eyes,  at  the 
gentleman.  "  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  said  he.  "  You  have  no  right  to  ask 
me  what  I  mean,"  was  the  quiet  reply,  "  get  your  horse  at  once,  and  remem 
ber  what  I  tell  you."  After  a  short  pause  he  promised  to  do  so,  and  actually 
got  into  the  saddle ;  but,  being  still  intoxicated,  he  began  calling  aloud  to 
one  after  another  of  his  friends,  and  at  last  seemed  to  have  forgotten  the 
warning  he  had  received  and  became  again  uproarious,  shouting  the  name 
of  a  well-known  courtezan  in  company  with  those  of  two  men  whom  he 
considered  heads  of  the  committee,  as  a  sort  of  challenge ;  perhaps,  how 
ever,  as  a  simple  act  of  bravado.  It  seems  probable  that  the  intimation  of 
personal  danger  he  had  received  had  not  been  forgotten  entirely ;  though 
fatally  for  him,  he  took  a  foolish  way  of  showing  his  remembranco  of  it. 
He  sought  out  Alexander  Davis,  the  Judge  of  the  Court,  and  drawing  a 
cocked  Derringer,  he  presented  it  at  his  head,  and  told  him  that  he  should 
hold  him  as  a  hostage  for  his  own  safety.  As  the  judge  stood  perfectly 
quiet,  and  offered  no  resistance  to  his  captor,  no  further  outrage  followed  on 
this  score.  Previous  to  this,  on  account  of  the  critical  state  of  affairs,  the 
committee  had  met,  and  at  last  resolved  to  arrest  him.  His  execution  had 
not  been  agreed  upon,  and,  at  that  time,  would  have  been  negatived,  most 
assuredly.  A  messenger  rode  down  to  Nevada  to  inform  the  leading  men 
of  what  was  on  hand,  as  it  was  desirable  to  show  that  there  was  a  feeling 
of  unanimity  on  the  subject,  all  along  the  gulch. 

The  miners  turned  out  almost  en  masse,  leaving  their  work  and  forming 
in  solid  column,  about  six  hundred  strong,  armed  to  the  teeth,  they  marched 
up  to  Virginia.  The  leader  of  the  body  well  knew  the  temper  of  his  men 
on  the  subject.  He  spurred  on  ahead  of  them,  and  hastily  calling  a  meet 
ing  of  the  executive,  he  told  them  plainly  that  the  miners  meant  "  busi 
ness,"  and  that,  if  they  came  up,  they  would  not  stand  in  the  street  to  be 
shot  down  by  Slade's  friends ;  but  that  they  would  take  him  and  hang  him. 
The  meeting  was  small,  as  the  Virginia  men  were  loath  to  act  at  all.  This 
momentous  announcement  of  the  feeling  of  the  Lower  Town  was  made  to 
a  cluster  of  men,  who  were  deliberating  behind  a  wagon,  at  the  rear  of  a 
store  on  Main  street. 

The  committee  were  most  unwilling  to  proceed  to  extremities.    All  the 


94:  TRIAL    AND    SENTENCE    OF    SLADE. 

duty  they  had  ever  performed  seemed  as  nothing  to  the  task  before  them ; 
but  they  had  to  decide,  and  that  quickly.  It  was  finally  agreed  that  if  the 
whole  body  of  the  miners  were  of  the  opinion  that  he  should  be  hanged, 
that  the  committee  left  it  in  their  hands  to  deal  with  him.  Off,  at  hot 
speed,  rode  the  leader  of  the  Nevada  men  to  join  his  command. 

Slade  had  found  out  what  was  intended,  and  the  news  sobered  him  in 
stantly.  He  went  into  P.  S.  Pfouts'  store,  where  Davis  was,  and  apologized 
for  his  conduct,  saying  that  he  would  take  it  all  back. 

The  head  of  the  column  now  wheeled  into  Wallace  street  and  marched  up 
at  quick  time.  Halting  in  front  of  the  store,  the  executive  officer  of  the  com 
mittee  stepped  forward  and  arrested  Slade,  who  was  at  once  informed  of  his 
doom,  and  inquiry  was  made  as  to  whether  he  had  any  business  to  settle. 
Several  parties  spoke  to  him  on  the  subject ;  but  to  all  such  inquiries  he 
turned  a  deaf  ear,  being  entirely  absorbed  in  the  terrifying  reflections  on 
his  own  awful  position.  He  never  ceased  his  entreaties  for  life,  and  to  see 
his  dear  wife.  The  unfortunate  lady  referred  to,  between  whom  and  Slade 
there  existed  a  warm  affection,  was  at  this  time  living  at  their  ranch  on  the 
Madison.  She  was  possessed  of  considerable  personal  attractions ;  tall, 
well-formed,  of  graceful  carriage,  pleasing  manners,  and  was,  withal,  an 
accomplished  horsewoman. 

A  messenger  from  Slade  rode  at  full  speed  to  inform  her  of  her  hus 
band's  arrest.  In  an  instant  she  was  in  the  saddle,  and  with  all  the  energy 
that  love  and  despair  could  lend  to  an  ardent  temperament  and  a  strong 
physique,  she  urged  her  fleet  charger  over  the  twelve  miles  of  rough  and 
rocky  ground  that  intervened  between  her  and  the  object  of  her  passionate 
devotion. 

Meanwhile  a  party  of  volunteers  had  made  the  necessary  preparations 
for  the  execution,  in  the  valley  traversed  by  the  branch.  Beneath  the  site 
of  Pfouts  and  Russell's  stone  building  there  was  a  corral,  the  gate-posts  of 
which  were  strong  and  high.  Across  the  top  was  laid  a  beam,  to  which 
the  rope  was  fastened,  and  a  dry -goods  box  served  for  the  platform.  To 
this  place  Slade  was  marched,  surrounded  by  a  guard,  composing  the  best 
armed  and  most  numerous  force  that  has  ever  appeared  in  Montana  Terri 
tory. 

The  doomed  man  had  so  exhausted  himself  by  tears,  prayers  and  lamen 
tations,  that  he  had  scarcely  strength  left  to  stand  under  the  fatal  beam. 
He  repeatedly  exclaimed,  "  My  God !  my  God  1  must  I  die  ?  Oh,  my  dear 
wife ! " 

On  the  return  of  the  fatigue  party,  they  encountered  some  friends  of 
Slade,  staunch  and  reliable  citizens  and  members  of  the  committee,  but  who 
were  personally  attached  to  the  condemned.  On  hearing  of  his  sentence, 
one  of  them,  a  stout-hearted  man,  pulled  out  his  handkerchief  and  walked 
away,  weeping  like  a  child.  Slade  still  begged  to  see  his  wife,  most 
piteously,  and  it  seemed  hard  to  deny  his  request ;  but  the  bloody  conse 
quences  that  were  sure  to  follow  the  inevitable  attempt  at  a  rescue,  that  her 
presence  and  entreaties  would  have  certainly  incited,  forbade  the  granting 


EXECUTION    OF    SLADE. 


95 


of  his  request.  Several  gentlemen  were  sent  for  to  see  him,  in  his  last  mo 
ments,  one  of  whom  (Judge  Davis)  made  a  short  address  to  the  people  ;  but 
in  such  low  tones  as  to  be  inaudible,  save  to  a  few  in  his  immediate  vicinity. 
One  of  his  friends,  after  exhausting  his  powers  of  entreaty,  threw  off  hig 
coat  and  declared  that  the  prisoner  could  not  be  hanged  until  he  himself 
was  killed.  A  hundred  guns  were  instantly  leveled  at  him ;  whereupon  he 


A    WIFE  S    LAMENTATION. 


turned  and  fled ;  but,  being  brought  back,  he  was  compelled  to  resume  hia 
coat,  and  to  give  a  promise  of  future  peaceable  demeanor. 

Scarcely  a  leading  man  in  Virginia  could  be  found,  though  numbers  of 
the  citizens  joined  the  ranks  of  the  guard  when  the  arrest  was  made.  All 
lamented  the  stern  necessity  which  dictated  the  execution. 

Everything  being  ready,  the  command  was  given,  "  Men,  do  your  duty," 
and  the  box  being  instantly  slipped  from  beneath  his  feet,  he  died  almost 
instantaneously. 

The  body  was  cut  down  and  carried  to  the  Virginia  Hotel,  where,  In  a 
darkened  room,  it  was  scarcely  laid  out,  when  the  unfortunate  and  bereaved 
companion  of  the  deceased  arrived,  at  headlong  speed,  to  find  that  all  was 
over,  and  that  she  was  a  widow.  Her  grief  and  heart-piercing  cries  were 
terrible  evidences  of  the  depth  of.  her  attachment  for  her  lost  husband,  and 
a  considerable  period  elapsed  before  she  could  regain  the  command  of  her 
excited  feelings. 

There  is  something  about  the  desperado-nature  that  is 
wholly  unaccountable — at  least  it  looks  unaccountable.  It  is 
this.  The  true  desperado  is  gifted  with  splendid  courage,  and 
yet  he  will  take  the  most  infamous  advantage  of  his  enemy ; 
armed  and  free,  he  will  stand  up  before  a  host  and  fight  until 


96  "WAS    SLADE    A    COWARD." 

he  is  shot  all  to  pieces,  and  yet  when  he  is  under  the  gallows 
and  helpless  he  will  cry  and  plead  like  a  child.  Words  are 
cheap,  and  it  is  easy  to  call  Slade  a  coward  (all  executed  men 
who  do  not  "  die  game  "  are  promptly  called  cowards  by  unre 
flecting  people),  and  when  we  read  of  Slade  that  he  "  had  so 
exhausted  himself  by  tears,  prayers  and  lamentations,  that  he 
had  scarcely  strength  left  to  stand  under  the  fatal  beam,"  the 
disgraceful  word  suggests  itself  in  a  moment — yet  in  fre 
quently  defying  and  inviting  the  vengeance  of  banded  Rocky 
Mountain  cut-throats  by  shooting  down  their  comrades  and 
leaders,  and  never  offering  to  hide  or  fly,  Slade  showed  that  he 
was  a  man  of  peerless  bravery.  No  coward  would  dare  that. 
Many  a  notorious  coward,  many  a  chicken-livered  poltroon, 
coarse,  brutal,  degraded,  has  made  his  dying  speech  without  a 
quaver  in  his  voice  and  been  swung  into  eternity  with  what 
looked  liked  the  calmest  fortitude,  and  so  we  are  justified  in 
believing,  from  the  low  intellect  of  such  a  creature,  that  it  was 
not  moral  courage  that  enabled  him  to  do  it.  Then,  if  rnora) 
courage  is  not  the  requisite  quality,  what  could  it  have  been 
that  this  stout-hearted  Slade  lacked  ? — this  bloody,  desperate, 
kindly-mannered,  urbane  gentleman,  who  never  hesitated  to 
warn  his  most  ruffianly  enemies  that  he  would  kill  them  when- 
ever  or  wherever  he  came  across  them  next !  I  think  it  is  a 
conundrum  worth  investigating. 


CHAPTEE  XII. 

JUST  beyond  the  breakfast-station  we  overtook  a  Mormon 
emigrant  train  of  thirty-three  wagons;  and  tramping 
wearily  along  arid  driving  their  herd  of  loose  cows,  were  doz 
ens  of  coarse-clad  and  sad-looking  men,  women  and  children, 
who  had  walked  as  they  were  walking  now,  day  after  day  for 
eight  lingering  weeks,  and  in  that  time  had  compassed  the 
distance  our  stage  had  come  in  eight  days  and  three  hours^  •• 
seven  hundred  and  ninety-eight  miles  !  They  were  dusty  and 
uncombed,  hatiess,  bonnetless  and  ragged,  and  they  did  look 
so  tired ! 

After  breakfast,  we  bathed  in  Horse  Creek,  a  (previously) 
limpid,  sparkling  stream — an  appreciated  luxury,  for  it  was 
very  seldom  that  our  furious  coach  halted  long  enough  for  an 
indulgence  of  that  kind.  We  changed  horses  ten  or  twelve 
times  in  every  twenty-four  hours — changed  mules,  rather — 
six  mules — and  did  it  nearly  every  time  in  four  minutes.  It 
was  lively  work.  As  our  coach  rattled  up  to  each  station  six 
harnessed  mules  stepped  gayly  from  the  stable;  and  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye,  almost,  the  old  team  was  out,  and  the 
new  one  in  and  we  off  and  away  again. 

During  the  afternoon  we  passed  Sweetwater  Creek,  Inde 
pendence  Kock,  Devil's  Gate  and  the  Devil's  Gap.  The  latter 
were  wild  specimens  of  rugged  scenery,  and  full  of  interest — • 
we  were  in  the  heart  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  now.  And  we 
also  passed  by  "  Alkali "  or  "  Soda  Lake,"  and  we  woke  up  to 
the  fact  that  our  journey  had  stretched  a  long  way  across  the 
7t 


98  AN    ENTIRE    INHABITANT. 

world  when  the  driver  said  that  the  Mormons  often  came 
there  from  Great  Salt  Lake  City  to  haul  away  saleratus.  He 
said  that  a  few  days  gone  by  they  had  shoveled  up  enough 
pure  saleratus  from  the  ground  (it  was  a  di*y  lake)  to 
load  two  wagons,  and  that  when  they  got  these  two  wagon- 
loads  of  a  drug  that  cost  them  nothing,  to  Salt  Lake,  they 
could  sell  it  for  twenty-five  cents  a  pound. 

In  the  night  we  sailed  by  a  most  notable  curiosity,  and  one 
we  had  been  hearing  a  good  deal  about  for  a  day  or  two,  and 
were  suffering  to  see.  This  was  what  might  be  called  a  nat 
ural  ice-house.  It  was  August,  now,  and  sweltering  weather 
in  the  daytime,  yet  at  one  of  the  stations  the  men  could  scrape 
the  soil  on  the  hill-side  under  the  lee  of  a  range  of  boulders, 
and  at  a  depth  of  six  inches  cut  out  pure  blocks  of  ice — hard, 
compactly  frozen,  and  clear  as  crystal !  , 

Toward  dawn  we  got  under  way  again,  and  presently  as 
we  sat  with  raised  curtains  enjoying  our  early-morning  smoke 
and  contemplating  the  first  splendor  of  the  rising  sun  as  it 
swept  down  the  long  array  of  mountain  peaks,  flushing  and 
gilding  crag  after  crag  and  summit  after  summit,  as  if  the 
invisible  Creator  reviewed  his  gray  veterans  and  they  saluted 
with  a  smile,  we  hove  in  sight  of  South  Pass  City.  The  hotel- 
keeper,  the  postmaster,  the  blacksmith,  the  mayor,  the  consta 
ble,  the  city  marshal  and  the  principal  citizen  and  property 
holder,  all  came  out  and  greeted  us  cheerily,  and  we  gave  him 
good  day.  He  gave  us  a  little  Indian  news,  and  a  little  Bocky 
Mountain  news,  and  we  gave  him  some  Plains  information 
in  return.  He  then  retired  to  his  lonely  grandeur  and  we 
climbed  on  up  among  the  bristling  peaks  and  the  ragged  clouds. 
South  Pass  City  consisted  of  four  log  cabins;  one  of  which  was 
unfinished,  and  the  gentleman  with  all  those  offices  and  titles 
was  the  chiefest  of  the  ten  citizens  of  the  place.  Think  of  hotel- 
keeper,  postmaster,  blacksmith,  mayor,  constable,  city  mar 
shal  and  principal  citizen  all  condensed  into  one  person  and 
crammed  into  one  skin.  Bemis  said  he  was  "  a  perfect  Allen's 
revolver  of  dignities."  And  he  said  that  if  he  were  to  die 
as  postmaster,  or  as  blacksmith,  or  as  postmaster  and  blacksmith 


IN    SIGHT    OF    ETERNAL    SNOW. 


both,  the  people  might  stand  it ;  but  if  he  were  to  die  all  over, 
it  would  be  a  frightful  loss  to  the  community. 

Two  miles  beyond  South  Pass  City  we  saw  for  the  first 

time  that  myste 
rious  marvel  which 
all  Western  un- 
traveled  boys  have 
heard  of  and  fully 
believe  in,  but  are 
sure  to  be  astound 
ed  at  when  they 
see  it  with  their 
own  eyes,  nerrer- 
theless  —  banks  of 
snow  in  dead  sum 
mer  time.  We 
were  now  far  up 
toward  the  sky,and 
knew  all  the  time 
that  we  must  pres 
ently  encounter 
lofty  summits  clad  in  the  "  eternal  snow  "  which  was  so  common- 
phice  a  matter  of  mention  in  books,  and  yet  when  I  did  see  it  glit 
tering  in  the  sun  on  stately  domes  in  the  distance  and  knew  the 
month  was  August  and  that  my  coat  was  hanging  up  because  it 
was  too  warm  to  wear  it,  I  was  full  as  much  amazed  as  if  I  never 
had  heard  of  snow  in  August  before.  Truly,  "  seeing  is  be 
lieving  " — and  many  a  man  lives  a  long  life  through,  thinking 
he  believes  certain  universally  received  and  well  established 
things,  and  yet  never  suspects  that  if  he  were  confronted  by 
those  things  once,  he  would  discover  that  he  did  not  really 
believe  them  before,  but  only  thought  he  believed  them. 

In  a  little  while  quite  a  number  of  peaks  swung  into  view 
with  long  claws  of  glittering  snow  clasping  them ;  and  with 
here  and  there,  in  the  shade,  down  the  mountain  side,  a  little 
solitary  patch  of  snow  looking  no  larger  than  a  lady's  pocket- 
handkerchief,  but  being  in  reality  as  large  as  a  "  public  square." 
And  now,  at  last,  we  were  fairly  in  the  renowned  SOUTH 


TIIK    CONCENTKATED    INHABITANT. 


'100  THE    SOUTH    PASS: 

.PASS,  and  whirling  gayly  along  high  above  the  common  world. 
We  were  perched  upon  the  extreme  summit  of  the  great 
range  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  toward  which  we  had  been 
climbing,  patiently  climbing,  ceaselessly  climbing,  for  days 
and  nights  together — and  about  us  was  gathered  a  convention 
of  Nature's  kings  that  stood  ten,  twelve,  and  even  thirteen 
thousand  feet  high — grand  old  fellows  who  would  have  to 
stoop  to  see  Mount  Washington,  in  the  twilight.  We  were  in 
such  an  airy  elevation  above  the  creeping  populations  of  the 
earth,  that  now  and  then  when  the  obstructing  crags  stood 
out  of  the  way  it  seemed  that  we  could  look  around  and 
abroad  and  contemplate  the  whole  great  globe,  with  its  dis 
solving  views  of  mountains,  seas  and  continents  stretching 
away  through  the  mystery  of  the  summer  haze. 

As  a  general  thing  the  Pass  was  more  suggestive  of  a  val 
ley  than  a  suspension  bridge  in  the  clouds — but  it  strongly 
suggested  the  latter  at  one  spot.  At  that  place  the  upper 
third  of  one  or  two  majestic  purple  domes  projected  above  our 
level  on  either  hand  and  gave  us  a  sense  of  a  hidden  great 
deep  of  mountains  and  plains  and  valleys  down  about  their 
bases  which  we  fancied  we  might  see  if  we  could  step  to  the 
edge  and  look  over.  These  Sultans  of  the  fastnesses  were  tur- 
baned  with  tumbled  volumes  of  cloud,  which  shredded  away 
from  time  to  time  and  drifted  off  fringed  and  torn,  trailing 
their  continents  of  shadow  after  them  ;  and  catching  presently 
on  an  intercepting  peak,  wrapped  it  about  and  brooded  there 
— then  shredded  away  again  and  left  the  purple  peak,  as  they 
had  left  the  purple  domes,  downy  and  white  with  new-laid 
snow.  In  passing,  these  monstrous  rags  of  cloud  hung  low 
and  swept  along  right  over  the  spectator's  head,  swinging  their 
tatters  so  nearly  in  his  face  that  his  impulse  was  to  shrink 
when  they  came  closest.  In  the  one  place  I  speak  of,  one 
could  look  below  him  upon  a  world  of  diminishing  crags  and 
canyons  leading  down,  down,  and  away  to  a  vague  plain  with 
a  thread  in  it  which  was  a  road,  and  bunches  of  feathers  in  it 
which  were  trees, — a  pretty  picture  sleeping  in  the  sunlight — 
but  with  a  darkness  stealing  over  it  and  glooming  its  features 


TWO    LONG    JOURNEYS. 


101 


deeper  and  deeper  under  the  frown  of  a  coming  storm ;  and 
then,  while  no  film  or  shadow  marred  the  noon  brightness  of 
his  high  perch,  he  could  watch  the  tempest  break  forth  down 
there  and  see  the  lightnings  leap  from  crag  to  crag  and  the 
sheeted  rain  drive  along  the  canyon-sides,  and  hear  the  thun 
ders  peal  and  crash  and  roar.  We  had  this  spectacle ;  a  famil 
iar  one  to  many,  but  to  us  a  novelty. 

We  bowled  along  cheerily,  and  presently,  at  the  very  sum 
mit  (though  it 
had  been  all 
summit  to  us, 
and  all  equally 
level,  for  half 
an  hour  or  more), 
we  came  to  a 
spring  w  h  i  c  h 
spent  its  water 
through  two  out 
lets  and  sent  it 
in  opposite  di 
rections.  The 
conductor  said  that  one  of  those 
streams  which  we  were  looking 
at,  was  just  starting  on  a  jour 
ney  westward  to  the  Gulf  of 
California  and  the  Pacific  Ocean,  through  hundreds  and  even 
thousands  of  miles  of  desert  solitudes.  He  said  that  the 
other  was  just  leaving  its  home  among  the  snow-peaks  oft 

similar  journey  eastward — and  we  knew  that  long  after  we 
hould  have  forgotten  the  simple  rivulet  it  would  still  be  plod 
ding  its  patient  way  down  the  mountain  sides,  and  canyoiv 

ds,  and  between  the  banks  of  the  Yellowstone ;  and  by  and 
by  would  join  the  broad  Missouri  and  flow  through  unknown 
plains  and  deserts  and  unvisited  wildernesses ;  and  add  a  long 
1  pilgrimage  among  snags  and  wrecks  and  sand 
bars ;  and  enter  the  Mississippi,  touch  the  wharves  of  St. 
Louis  and  stiil  drift  on,  traversing  shoals  and  rocky  channels, 


THE   PARTED   STREAM. 


102 


OLD    FRIENDS    MEET. 


then  endless  chains  of  bottomless  and  ample  bends,  walled 
with  unbroken  forests,  then  mysterious  byways  and  secret  pas- 
ages  among  woody  islands,  then  the  chained  bends  again,  bor 
dered  with  wide  levels  of  shining  sugar-cane  in  place  of  the 
sombre  forests ;  then  by  New  Orleans  and  still  other  chains 
of  bends — and  finally,  after  two  long  months  of  daily  and 
nightly  harassment,  excitement,  enjoyment,  adventure,  and 
awful  peril  of  parched  throats,  pumps  and  evaporation,  pass 
the  Gulf  and  enter  into  its  rest  upon  the  bosom  of  the  tropic 
sea,  never  to  look  upon  its  snow-peaks  again  or  regret  them. 

I  freighted  a  leaf  with  a  mental  message  for  the  friends  at 
home,  and  dropped  it  in  the  stream.  But  I  put  no  stamp  on 
it  and  it  was  held  for  postage  somewhere. 

On  the  summit  we  overtook  an  emigrant  train  of  many 
wagons,  many  tired  men  and  women,  and  many  a  disgusted 
sheep  and  cow.  In  the  wofully  dusty  horseman  in  charge  of 
the  expedition  I  recognized  John  -  — .  Of  all  persons  in  the 

wrorld  to  meet  on  top  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains  thousands 
of  miles  from  home,he  was  the 
last  one  I  should  have  looked 
for.  We  were  school-boys 
together  and  warm  friends 
for  years.  But  a  boyish 
prank  of  mine  had  disrup- 
tured  this  friendship  and 
it  had  never  been  renewed. 
The  act  of  which  I  speak 
was  this.  I  had  been  ac 
customed  to  visit  occasion 
ally  an  editor  whose  room 
was  in  the  third  story  of  a 
building  and  overlooked  the 
street.  One  day  this  editor 
gave  me  a  watermelon 

IT  8POILED  THE  MELON.  ^^     J    ma(Je    preparationB 

to  devour  on  the   spot,   but   chancing  to  look  out   of  the 


DOWN    THE    MOUNTAIN. 


103 


window,  I  saw  Jolm  standing  directly  under  it  and  an 
irresistible  desire  came  upon  me  to  drop  the  melon  on  his 
head,  which  I  immediately  did.  I  was  the  loser,  for  it  spoiled 
the  melon,  and  John  never  forgave  me  and  we  dropped 
all  intercourse  and  parted,  but  now  met  again  under  these 
circumstances. 

"We  recognized  each  other  simultaneously,  and  hands 
were  grasped  as  warmly  as  if  no  coldness  had  ever  existed 
between  us,  and  no  allusion  was  made  to  any.  All  animosities 
were  buried  and  the  simple  fact  of  meeting  a  familiar  face  in 
that  isolated  spot  so  far  from  home,  was  sufficient  to  make  us 
forget  all  things  but  pleasant  ones,  and  we  parted  again  with 
sincere  "  good-byes  "  and  "  God  bless  you  "  from  both. 

We  had  been  climbing  up  the  long  shoulders  of  the  Hocky 
Mountains  for  many  tedious  hours — wre  started  down  them, 
now.  And  we  went  spinning  away  at  a  round  rate  too. 

We  left  the  snowy  Wind  River  Mountains  and  Uinta 
Mountains  behind,  and  sped  away,  always  through  splendid 
scenery  but  occasionally  through  long  ranks  of  white  skele-  ,/ 
tons  of  mules  and 
oxen  —  monu 
ments  of  the  huge 
emigration  of 
other  days — and 
here  and  there 
were  up-ended 
boards  or  small 
piles  of  stones 
which  the  driver 
said  marked  the 
resting-place  of 
more  precious 

remains.  It  was  the  loneliest  land  for  a  grave !  A  land  given 
over  to  the  cayote  and  the  raven — wrhich  is  but  another  name 
for  desolation  and  utter  solitude.  On  damp,  murky  nights, 
these  scattered  skeletons  gave  forth  a  soft,  hideous  glow,  like 
very  faint  spots  of  moonlight  starring  the  vague  desert.  It 


GIVEN  OVER  TO  TUB  CAYOTE  AND  THE  RAVEN. 


104 


VERY    FOOLISH    ADVICE. 


was  because  of  the  phosphorus  in  the  bones.  But  no  scientific 
explanation  could  keep  a  body  from  shivering  when  he  drifted 
by  one  of  those  ghostly  lights  and  knew  that  a  skull  held  it. 

At  midnight  it  began  to  rain,  and  I  never  saw  anything 
like  it — indeed,  I  did  not  even  see  this,  for  it  was  too  dark. 
We  fastened  down  the  curtains  and  even  caulked  them  with 
clothing,  but  the  rain  streamed  in  in  twenty  places,  notwith 
standing.  There  was  no  escape.  If  one  moved  his  feet  out 
of  a  stream,  he  brought  his  body  under  one ;  and  if  he  moved 
his  body  he  caught  one  somewhere  else.  If  he  struggled  out 
of  the  drenched  blankets  and  sat  up,  he  was  bound  to  get  one 
down  the  back  of  his  neck.  Meantime  the  stage  was  wander 
ing  about  a  plain  with  gaping  gullies  in  it,  for  the  driver  could 
not  see  an  inch  before  his  face  nor  keep  the  road ,  and  the 
storm  pelted  so  pitilessly  that  there  was  no  keeping  the  horses 
still.  With  the  first  abatement  the  conductor  turned  out  with 
lanterns  to  look  for  the  road,  and  the  first  dash  he  made  was 
into  a  chasm  about  fourteen  feet  deep,  his  lantern  following 

like  a  meteor.  As  soon  as 
he  touched  bottom  he  sang 
out  frantically : 

"  Don't  come  here ! " 
To  which  the  driver,  who 
was  looking  over  the  preci 
pice  where  he  had  disap 
peared,  replied,  with  an  in 
jured  air :  "  Think  I'm  a 
dam  fool?" 

The  conductor  was  more 
than  an  hour  finding  the  road 

"  DON'T  COME  HERE."  — a  matter  which  showed  us 

how  far  we  had  wandered  and  what  chances  we  had  been 
taking.  He  traced  our  wheel-tracks  to  the  imminent  verge  of 
danger,  in  two  places.  I  have  always  been  glad  that  we  were 
not  killed  that  night.  I  do  not  know  any  particular  reason,  but 
I  have  always  been  glad. 

In  the  morning,  the  tenth   day  out,  we  crossed-  Green 


WE    GO    WITH    THE    MAJORITY.  105 

Biver,  a  fine,  large,  limpid  stream — stuck  in  it,  with  the  water 
just  up  to  the  top  of  our  mail-bed,  and  waited  till  extra  teams 
were  put  on  to  haul  us  up  the  steep  bank.  But  it  was  nice 
cool  water,  and  besides  it  could  not  find  any  fresh  place  on  us 
to  wet. 

At  the  Green  River  station  we  had  breakfast — hot  biscuits, 
fresh  antelope  steaks,  and  coffee — the  only  decent  meal  we 
tasted  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Salt  Lake  City, 
and  the  only  one  we  were 
ever  really  thankful  for. 
Think  of  the  monotonous 
execrableness  of  the  thirty 
that  went  before  it,  to  leave 
this  one  simple  breakfast 
looming  up  in  my  memory 
like  a  shot-tower  after  all 
these  years  have  gone  by ! 

At  five  P.M.  we  reached 
Fort  Bridger,  one  hundred 
and  seventeen  miles  from 

the     South     Pass,    and    one  "THINK  I'M  A  FOOL?" 

thousand  and  twenty-five  miles  from  St.  Joseph.  Fifty-two 
miles  further  on,  near  the  head  of  Echo  Canyon,  we  met  sixty 
United  States  soldiers  from  Camp  Floyd.  The  day  before,  they 
had  fired  upon  three  hundred  or  four  hundred  Indians,  whom 
they  supposed  gathered  together  for  no  good  purpose.  In 
the  fight  that  had  ensued,  four  Indians  were  captured,  and 
the  main  body  chased  four  miles,  but  nobody  killed.  This 
looked  like  business.  We  had  a  notion  to  get  out  and  join  the 
sixty  soldiers,  but  upon  reflecting  that  there  were  four  hundred 
of  the  Indians,  we  concluded  to  go  on  and  join  the  Indians. 
Echo  Canyon  is  twenty  miles  long.  It  was  like  a  long, 
smooth,  narrow  street,  with  a  gradual  descending  grade,  and 
shut  in  by  enormous  perpendicular  walls  of  coarse  conglom 
erate,  four  hundred  feet  high  in  many  places,  and  turreted  like 
mediaeval  castles.  This  was  the  most  faultless  piece  of  road 
in  the  mountains^  and  the  driver  said  he  would  "  let  his  team 


106 


WE    VISIT    AN    ANGEL. 


out."  He  did,  and  if  the  Pacific  express  trains  wliiz  through 
there  now  any  faster  than  we  did  then  in  the  stage-coach,  I 
envy  the  passengers  the  exhilaration  of  it.  We  fairly  seemed 
to  pick  up  our  wheels  and  fly — and  the  mail  matter  was  lifted 
Up  free  from  everything  and  held  in  solution  !  I  am.  not  given 
to  exaggeration,  and  when  I  say  a  thing  I  mean  it. 

However,  time  presses.      At  four  in   the   afternoon  we 

arrived  on  the  summit  of 
Big  Mountain,  fifteen  miles 
from  Salt  Lake  City,  when 
all  the  world  was  glorified 
with  the  setting  sun,  and 
the  most  stupendous  pano 
rama  of  mountain  peaks  yet 
encountered  burst  on  our 
sight.  We  looked  out  upon 
this  sublime  spectacle  from 
under  the  arch  of  a  brilliant 
rainbow!  Even  the  over 
land  stage-driver  stopped  his 
horses  and  gazed ! 

Half  an  hour  or  an  hour 
later,  we  changed  horses,  and 
took  supper  with  a  Mormon 
"  Destroying  Angel."  "  De 
stroying  Angels,"  as  I  un 
derstand  it,  are  Latter-Day  Saints  who  are  set  apart  by  the 
Church  to  conduct  permanent  disappearances  of  obnoxious 
citizens.  I  had  heard  a  deal  about  these  Mormon  Destroying 
Angels  and  the  dark  and  bloody  deeds  they  had  done,  and 
when  I  entered  this  one's  house  I  had  my  shudder  all  ready. 
But  alas  for  all  our  romances,  he  was  nothing  but  a  loud, 
profane,  offensive,  old  blackguard  !  He  was  murderous  enough, 
possibly,  to  fill  the  bill  of  a  Destroyer,  but  would  you  have  any 
kind  of  an  Angel  devoid  of  dignity  ?  Could  you  abide  an  Angel 
in  an  unclean  shirt  and  no  suspenders  ?  Could  you  respect 
an  Angel  with  a  horse-laugh  and  a  swagger  like  a  buccaneer? 


THE  "DESTROYING  ANGEL." 


CITY    OF    THE    SAINTS.  107 

There  were  other  blackguards  present — comrades  of  this 
one.  And  there  was  one  person  that  looked  like  a  gentleman 
— Heber  C.  Kimball's  son,  tall  and  well  made,  and  thirty  years 
old,  perhaps.  A  lot  of  slatternly  women  flitted  hither  and 
thither  in  a  hurry,  with  coffee-pots,  plates  of  bread,  and  other 
appurtenances  to  supper,  and  these  were  said  to  be  the  wives 
of  the  Angel — or  some  of  them,  at  least.  And  of  course  they 
were ;  for  if  they  had  been  hired  "  help  "  they  would  not  have 
let  an  angel  from  above  storm  and  swear  at  them  as  he  did, 
let  alone  one  from  the  place  this  one  hailed  from. 

This  was  our  first  experience  of  the  western  "  peculiar  in 
stitution,"  and  it  was  not  very  prepossessing.  We  did  not 
tarry  long  to  observe  it,  but  hurried  on  to  the  home  of  the 
Latter-Day  Saints,  the  stronghold  of  the  prophets,  the  capital 
of  the  only  absolute  monarch  in  America — Great  Salt  Lake 
City.  As  the  night  closed  in  we  took  sanctuary  in  the  Salt 
Lake  House  and  unpacked  our  baggage. 


CHAPTEE    XIII. 

~TTT~E  had  a  fine  supper,  of  the  freshest  meats  and  fowls 
V  V  and  vegetables — a  great  variety  and  as  great  abun 
dance.  We  walked  about  the  streets  some,  afterward,  and 
glanced  in  at  shops  and  stores ;  and  there  was  fascination  in 
surreptitiously  staring  at  every  creature  we  took  to  be  a  Mor 
mon.  This  was  fairy-land  to  us,  to  all  intents  and  purposes — 
a  land  of  enchantment,  and  goblins,  and  awful  mystery.  We 
felt  a  curiosity  to  ask  every  child  how  many  mothers  it  had, 
and  if  it  could  tell  them  apart ;  and  we  experienced  a  thrill 
every  time  a  dwelling-house  door  opened  and  shut  as  we 
passed,  disclosing  a  glimpse  of  human  heads  and  backs  and 
shoulders — for  we  so  longed  to  have  a  good  satisfying  look  at 
a  Mormon  family  in  all  its  comprehensive  ampleness,  disposed 
in  the  customary  concentric  rings  of  its  home  circle. 

By  and  by  the  Acting  Governor  of  the  Territory  intro 
duced  us  to  other  "  Gentiles,"  and  we  spent  a  sociable  hour 
with  them.  "  Gentiles "  are  people  who  are  not  Mormons. 
Our  fellow-passenger,  Bemis,  took  care  of  himself,  during  this 
part  of  the  evening,  and  did  not  make  an  overpowering  suc 
cess  of  it,  either,  for  he  came  into  our  room  in  the  hotel  about 
eleven  o'clock,  full  of  cheerfulness,  and  talking  loosely,  dis- 
jointedly  and  indiscriminately,  and  every  now  and  then  tug 
ging  out  a  ragged  word  by  the  roots  that  had  more  hiccups 
than  syllables  in  it.  This,  together  with  his  hanging  his  coat 
on  the  floor  on  one  side  of  a  chair,  and  his  vest  on  the  floor 
on  the  other  side,  and  piling  his  pants  on  the  floor  just  in 


BEMIS'S    WEAKNESS. 


109 


front  of  the  same  chair,  and  then  contemplating  the  general 
result  with  superstitious  awe,  and  finally  pronouncing  it  "  too 
many  for  1dm"  and  going  to  bed  with  his  boots  on,  led  us 
to  fear  that  something 
he  had  eaten  had  not 
agreed  with  him. 

But  we  knew  after 
ward  that  it  was  some 
thing  he  had  been 
drinking.  It  was  the 
exclusively  Mormon 
refresher,"  valley  tan." 
Valley  tan  (or,  at  least, 
one  form  of  valley 
tan)  is  a  kind  of  whis 
ky,  or  first  cousin  to 
it;  is  of  Mormon  in 
vention  and  manufac 
tured  only  in  Utah. 
Tradition  says  it  is 
made  of  (imported) 
fire  and  brimstone.  If 
I  remember  rightly  no  public  drinking  saloons  were  allowed 
in  the  kingdom  by  Brigham  Young,  and  no  private  drinking 
permitted  among  the  faithful,  except  they  confined  themselves 
to  "  valley  tan." 

Kext  day  we  strolled  about  everywhere  through  the  broad, 
straight,  level  streets,  and  enjoyed  the  pleasant  strangeness  of 
a  city  of  fifteen  thousand  inhabitants  with  no  loafers  percepti 
ble  in  it ;  and  no  visible  drunkards  or  noisy  people ;  a  limpid 
stream  rippling  and  dancing  through  every  street  in  place  of 
a  filthy  gutter ;  block  after  block  of  trim  dwellings,  built  of 
"  frame  "  and  sunburned  brick — a  great  thriving  orchard  and 
garden  behind  every  one  of  them,  apparently — branches  from 
the  street  stream  winding  and  sparkling  among  the  garden 
"beds  and  fruit  trees — and  a  grand  general  air  of  neatness,  re 
pair,  thrift  and  comfort,  around  and  about  and  over  the  whole. 


EFFECTS  OF    "VALLEY  TAN." 


110 


BEARS    AGAINST    BEES. 


And  everywhere  were  workshops,  factories,  and  all  manner  of 
industries ;  and  intent  faces  and  busy  hands  were  to  be  seen 
wherever  one  looked ;  and  in  one's  ears  was  the  ceaseless  clink 
of  hammers,  the  buzz  of  trade  and  the  contented  hum  of 
drums  and  fly-wheels. 

The  armorial  crest  of  my  own  State  consisted  of  two  dis 
solute  bears  holding  up  the 
head  of  a  dead  and  gone 
cask  between  them  and  mak 
ing  the  pertinent  remark, 
"UNITED,  WE  STAND — <hio!>— 
DIVIDED,  WE  FALL."  It  was 
always  too  figurative  for  the 
author  of  this  book.  But 
the  Mormon  crest  was  easy. 
And  it  was  simple,  unosten 
tatious,  and  fitted  like  a 
glove.  It  was  a  representa 
tion  of  a  GOLDEN  BEEHIVE, 
with  the  bees  all  at  work ! 
1  The  city  lies  in  the  edge  of  a  level  plain  as  broad  as  the 
State  of  Connecticut,  and 
crouches  close  down  to  the 
ground  under  a  curving  wall 
of  mighty  mountains  whose 
heads  are  hidden  in  the 
clouds,  and  whose  shoulders 
bear  relics  of  the  snows  of 
winter  all  the  summer  long. 
Seen  from  one  of  these  dizzy 
heights,  twelve  or  fifteen 
miles  off,  Great  Salt  Lake 
City  is  toned  down  and  di 
minished  till  it  is  suggestive 
of  a  child's  toy-village  re 
posing  under  the  majestic  protection  of  the  Chinese  wall. 
On  some  of  those  mountains,  to  the  southwest,  it  had  been 


ONE  CREST. 


THE   OTHEK. 


A    HEALTHY    CITY. 


Ill 


raining  every  day  for  two  weeks,  but  not  a  drop  had  fallen  in 
the  city.  And  on  hot  days  in  late  spring  and  early  autumn 
the  citizens  could  quit  fanning  and  growling  and  go  out  and 
cool  off  by  looking  at  the  luxury  of  a  glorious  snow-storm  go 
ing  on  in  the  mountains.  They  could  enjoy  it  at  a  distance, 
at  those  seasons,  every  day,  though  no  snow  would  fall  in  their 
streets,  or  anywhere  near  them. 

Salt  Lake  City  was  healthy — an  extremely  healthy  city. 
They  declared  there  was  only  one  physician  in  the  place  and 


THE   VAGUANT. 


he  was  arrested  every  week  regularly  and  held  to  answer  under 
the  vagrant  act  for  having  "no  visible  means  of  support." 
[They  always  give  you  a  good  substantial  article  of  truth  in 


112  VISIT    TO    BRIGHAM    YOUNG. 

Salt  Lake,  and  good  measure  and  good  weight,  too.  Yery 
often,  if  you  wished  to  weigh  one  of  their  airiest  little  com 
monplace  statements  you  would  want  the  hay  scales.] 

"We  desired  to  visit  the  famous  inland  sea,  the  American 
"  Dead  Sea,"  the  great  Salt  Lake — seventeen  miles,  horseback, 
from  the  city — for  we  had  dreamed  about  it,  and  thought 
about  it,  and  talked  about  it,  and  yearned  to  see  it,  all  the  first 
part  of  our  trip  ;  but  now  when  it  was  only  arm's  length  away 
it  had  suddenly  lost  nearly  every  bit  of  its  interest.  And  so 
we  put  it  off,  in  a  sort  of  general  way,  till  next  day — and  .that 
was  the  last  we  ever  thought  of  it.  We  dined  writh  some  hos 
pitable  Gentiles ;  and  visited  the  foundation  of  the  prodigious 
temple  ;  and  talked  long  with  that  shrewd  Connecticut  Yankee, 
Heber  C.  Kimball  (since  deceased),  a  saint  of  high  degree 

and  a  mighty  man  of  commerce. 
We  saw  the  "  Tithing-House,"  and 
the  "  Lion  House,"  and  I  do  not 
know  or  remember  how  many 
more  church  and  government 
buildings  of  various  kinds  and 
curious  names.  We  flitted  hither 
and  thither  and  enjoyed  every 
hour,  and  picked  up  a  great  deal 
of  useful  information  and  enter 
taining  nonsense,  and  went  to 
bed  at  night  satisfied. 

The  second  day,  we  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Street 
(since  deceased)  and  put  on  white  shirts  and  went  and  paid  a 
state  visit  to  the  king.  He  seemed  a  quiet,  kindly,  easy-man 
nered,  dignified,  self-possessed  old  gentleman  of  fifty -five  or 
sixty,  and  had  a  gentle  craft  in  his  eye  that  probably  belonged 
there.  He  was  very  simply  dressed  and  was  just  taking  off  a 
straw  hat  as  we  entered.  He  talked  about  Utah,  and  the  In 
dians,  and  Nevada,  and  general  American  matters  and  ques 
tions,  with  our  secretary  and  certain  government  officials  who 
came  with  us.  But  he  never  paid  any  attention  to  me,  not 
withstanding  I  made  several  attempts  to  "  draw  him  out "  on 


YOUNG    AMERICA    PATRONIZED. 


113 


federal  politics  and  his  high  handed  attitude  toward  Congress. 
I  thought  some  of  the  things  I  said  were  rather  fine.  But  he 
merely  looked  around  at  me,  at  distant  intervals,  something  as  I 


have  seen  a  benignant  old  cat  look  around  to  see  which  kitten 
was  meddling  with  her  tail.  By  and  by  I  subsided  into  an 
indignant  silence,  and  so  sat  until  the  end,  hot  and  flushed, 
and  execrating  him  in  my  heart  for  an  ignorant  savage.  But 
he  was  calm.  His  conversation  with  those  gentlemen  flowed 
on  as  sweetly  and  peacefully  and  musically  as  any  summer 
brook.  "When  the  audience  was  ended  and  we  were  retiring 
from  the  presence,  he  put  his  hand  on  my  head,  beamed  down 
on  me  in  an  admiring  way  and  said  to  my  brother : 
"  Ah — your  child,  I  presume  ?  Boy,  or  girl  ? " 
8f 


CHAPTEE   XIY. 

MR.  STREET  was  very  busy  with  his  telegraphic  matters 
— and  considering  that  he  had  eight  or  nine  hundred 
miles  of  rugged,  snowy,  uninhabited  mountains,  and  waterless, 
treeless,  melancholy  deserts  to  traverse  with  his  wire,  it  was 
natural  and  needful  that  he  should  be  as  busy  as  possible.  He 
could  not  go  comfortably  along  and  cut  his  poles  by  the  road 
side,  either,  but  they  had  to  be  hauled  by  ox  teams  across 
those  exhausting  deserts — and  it  was  two  days'  journey  from 
water  to  water,  in  one  or  two  of  them.  Mr.  Street's  contract 
was  a  vast  work,  every  way  one  looked  at  it ;  and  yet  to  com 
prehend  what  the  vague  words  "  eight  hundred  miles  of  rug 
ged  mountains  and  dismal  deserts  "  mean,  one  must  go  over 
the  ground  in  person — pen  and  ink  descriptions  cannot  convey 
the  dreary  reality  to  the  reader.  And  after  all,  Mr.  S.'s 
mightiest  difficulty  turned  out  to  be  one  which  he  had  never 
taken  into  the  account  at  all.  Unto  Mormons  he  had  sub-let 
the  hardest  and  heaviest  half  of  his  great  undertaking,  and  all 
of  a  sudden  they  concluded  that  they  were  going  to  make 
little  or  nothing,  and  so  they  tranquilly  threw  their  poles 
overboard  in  mountain  or  desert,  just  as  it  happened  when 
they  took  the  notion,  and  drove  home  and  went  about  their 
customary  business!  They  were  under  written  contract  to 
Mr.  Street,  but  they  did  not  care  anything  for  that.  They 
said  they  would  "  admire  "  to  see  a  "  Gentile  "  force  a  Mormon 
to  fulfil  a  losing  contract  in  Utah !  And  they  made  them- 


A    CONTRACTOR    IN    TROUBLE.  115 

selves  very  merry  over  the  matter.     Street  said — for  it  was  lie 
that  told  us  these  things : 

"  I  was  in  dismay.  I  was  under  heavy  bonds  to  complete 
my  contract  in  a  given  time,  and  this  disaster  looked  very 
much  like  ruin.  It  was  an  astounding  thing;  it  was  such  a 
wholly  unlooked-for  difficulty,  that  I  was  entirely  nonplussed. 
I  am  a  business  man — have  always  been  a  business  man — do 
not  know  anything  but  business — and  so  you  can  imagine  how 
like  being  struck  by  lightning  it  was  to  find  myself  in  a  country 
where  written  contracts  were  worthless  ! — that  main  security, 
that  sheet-anchor,  that  absolute  necessity,  of  business.  My 
confidence  left  me.  There  was  no  use  in  making  new  con 
tracts — that  was  plain.  I  talked  with  first  one  prominent 
citizen  and  then  another.  They  all  sympathized  with  me,  first 
rate,  but  they  did  not  know  how  to  help  me.  But  at  last  a 
Gentile  said,  '  Go  to  Brigham  Young ! — these  small  fry  cannot 
do  you  any  good.'  I  did  not  think  much  of  the  idea,  for  if 
the  law  could  not  help  me,  what  could  an  individual  do  who 
had  not  even  anything  to  do  with  either  making  the  laws  or 
executing  them?  He  might  be  a  very  good  patriarch  of  a 
church  and  preacher  in  its  tabernacle,  but  something  sterner 
than  religion  and  moral  suasion  was  needed  to  handle  a  hun 
dred  refractory,  hall-civilized  sub-contractors.  But  what  was 
a  man  to  do  ?  I  thought  if  Mr.  Young  could  not  do  anything 
else,  he  might  probably  be  able  to  give  me  some  advice  and  a 
valuable  hint  or  two,  and  so  I  went  straight  to  him  and  laid 
the  whole  case  before  him.  He  said  very  little,  but  he  showed 
strong  interest  all  the  way  through.  He  examined  all  the 
papers  in  detail,  and  whenever  there  seemed  anything  like  a 
hitch,  either  in  the  papers  or  my  statement,  he  would  go  back 
and  take  up  the  thread  and  follow  it  patiently  out  to  an  intel 
ligent  and  satisfactory  result.  Then  he  made  a  list  of  the 
contractors'  names.  Finally  he  said  : 

"  '  Mr.  Street,  this  is  all  perfectly  plain.  These  contracts 
are  strictly  and  legally  drawn,  and  are  duly  signed  and  certi 
fied.  These  men  manifestly  entered  into  them  with  their  eyes 
open.  I  see  no  fault  or  flaw  anywhere.' 

"  Then  Mr.  Young  turned  to  a  man  waiting  at  the  other 


116 


BRIGHAM    YOUNG'S    DECISION. 


end  of  the  room  and  said :  i  Take  this  list  of  names  to  So-and- 
so,  and  tell  him  to  have  these  men  here  at  such-and-such  an 
hour.' 

"  They  were  there,  to  the  minute.     So  was  I.     Mr.  Young 


THE  CONTRACTORS  BEFORE  THE  KING. 

asked  them  a  number  of  questions,  and  their  answers  made 
my  statement  good.  Then  he  said  to  them : 

"  '  You  signed  these  contracts  and  assumed  these  obligations 
of  your  own  free  will  and  accord? ' 

" '  Yes.' 

"  i  Then  carry  them  out  to  the  letter,  if  it  makes  paupers  of 
you !  Go ! ' 

"  And  they  did  go,  too  !  They  are  strung  across  the  des 
erts  now,  working  like  bees.  And  I  never  hear  a  word  out 
of  them.  There  is  a  batch  of  governors,  and  judges,  and  other 
officials  here,  shipped  from  "Washington,  and  they  maintain 
the  semblance  of  a  republican  form  of  government — but  the 


VIEWS    OF    POLYGAMY. 


117 


petrified  truth  is  that  Utah  is  an  absolute  monarchy  and  Brig- 
ham  Young  is  king !  " 

Mr.  Street  was  a  fine  man,  and  I  believe  his  story.  I 
knew  him  well  during  several  years  afterward  in  San  Fran 
cisco. 

Our  stay  in  Salt  Lake  City  amounted  to  only  two  days, 
and  therefore  we  had  no  time  to  make  the  customary  inquisi 
tion  into  the  workings  of  polygamy  and  get  up  the  usual 


I   WAS   TOUCHED. 


statistics  and  deductions  preparatory  to  calling  the  attention 
of  the  nation  at  large  once  more  to  the  matter.  I  had  the 
will  to  do  it.  With  the  gushing  self-sufficiency  of  youth  I  was 
feverish  to  plunge  in  headlong  and  achieve  a  great  reform 
here — until  I  saw  the  Mormon  women.  Then  I  was  touched. 
My  heart  was  wiser  than  my  head.  It  warmed  toward  these 


118 


UNACCOUNTABLE  BENEVOLENCE. 


poor,  ungainly  and  pathetically  "  homely  "  creatures,  and  as  T 
turned  to  hide  the  generous  moisture  in  my  eyes,  I  said, 
"  No — the  man  that  marries  one  of  them  has  done  an  act  of 
Christian  charity  which  entitles  him  to  the  kindly  applause 
of  mankind,  not  their  harsh  censure — and  the  man  that  mar 
ries  sixty  of  them  has  done  a  deed  of  open-handed  generosity 
so  sublime  that  the  nations  should  stand  uncovered  in  his 
presence  and  worship  in  silence."  * 

*For  a  brief  sketch  of  Mormon  history,  and  the  noted  Mountain  Meadow 
massacre,  see  Appendices  A  and  B. 


OHAPTEE   XV. 

IT  is  a  luscious  country  for  thrilling  evening  stories  about 
assassinations  of  intractable  Gentiles.  I  cannot  easily 
conceive  of  anything  more  cosy  than  the  night  in  Salt  Lake 
which  we  spent  in  a  Gentile  den,  smoking  pipes  and  listening 
to  tales  of  how  Burton  galloped  in  among  the  pleading  and 
defenceless  "Morisites"  and  shot  them  down,  men  and 
women,  like  so  many  dogs.  And  how  Bill  Hickman,  a  De 
stroying  Angel,  shot  Drown  and  Arnold  dead  for  bringing  suit 
against  him  for  a  debt.  And  how  Porter  Rockwell  did  this 
and  that  dreadful  thing.  And  how  heedless  people  often  come 
to  Utah  and  make  remarks  about  Brigham,  or  polygamy,  or 
some  other  sacred  matter,  and  the  very  next  morning  at  day 
light  such  parties  are  sure  to  be  found  lying  up  some  back 
alley,  contentedly  waiting  for  the  hearse. 

And  the  next  most  interesting  thing  is  to  sit  and  listen  to 
these  Gentiles  talk  about  polygamy ;  and  how  some  portly 
old  frog  of  an  elder,  or  a  bishop,  marries  a  girl — likes  her, 
marries  her  sister — likes  her,  marries  another  sister — likes  her, 
takes  another — likes  her,  marries  her  mother — likes  her,  mar 
ries  her  father,  grandfather,  great  grandfather,  and  then  comes 
back  hungry  and  asks  for  more.  And  how  the  pert  young 
thing  of  eleven  will  chance  to  be  the  favorite  wife  and  her 
own  venerable  grandmother  have  to  rank  away  down  toward 
D  4  in  their  mutual  husband's  esteem,  and  have  to  sleep  in 
the  kitchen,  as  like  as  not.  And  how  this  dreadful  sort  of 
thing,  this  hiving  together  in  one  foul  nest  of  mother  and 


120 


BRIGHAM    YOUNG'S    HAREM. 


daughters,  and  the  making  a  young  daughter  superior  to  her 
own  mother  in  rank  and  authority,  are  things  which  Mormon 
women  submit  to  because  their  religion  teaches  them  that 


FAVORITE     WIFE     AND     D    4. 

the  more  wives  a  man  has  on  earth,  and  the  more  children  he 
rears,  the  higher  the  place  they  will  all  have  in  the  world  to 
come — and  the  warmer,  maybe,  though  they  do  not  seem  to 
say  anything  about  that. 

According  to  these  Gentile  friends  of  ours,  Brigham 
Young's  harem  contains  twenty  or  thirty  wives.  They  said 
that  some  of  them  had  grown  old  and  gone  out  of  active  ser 
vice,  but  were  comfortably  housed  and  cared  for  in  the  henery 
— or  the  Lion  House,  as  it  is  strangely  named.  Along  with 
each  wife  were  her  children — fifty  altogether.  The  house  was 
perfectly  quiet  and  orderly,  when  the  children  were  still. 
They  all  took  their  meals  in  one  room,  and  a  happy  and  home 
like  sight  it  was  pronounced  to  be.  None  of  our  party  got  an 


SEARCH    AMONG    THE    CHILDREN. 


121 


opportunity  to  take  dinner  with  Mr.  Young,  but  a  Gentile  by 
the  name  of  Johnson  professed  to  have  enjoyed  a  sociable 
breakfast  in  the  Lion  House.  He  gave  a  preposterous  account 
of  the  "  calling  of  the  roll,"  and  other  preliminaries,  and  the 
carnage  that  ensued  when  the  buckwheat  cakes  came  in.  But 
he  embellished  rather  too  much.  He  said  that  Mr.  Young 
told  him  several  smart  sayings  of  certain  of  his  "two-year- 
olds,"  observing  with  some  pride  that  for  many  years  he  had 
been  the  heaviest  contributor  in  that  line  to  one  of  the  East 
ern  magazines  ;  and  then  he  wanted  to  show  Mr.  Johnson  one 
of  the  pets  that  had  said  the  last  good  thing,  but  he  could  not 


NEEDED     MARKING. 

find  the  child.  He  searched  the  faces  of  the  children  in  de 
tail,  but  could  not  decide  which  one  it  was.  Finally  he  gave 
it  lip  with  a  sigh  and  said : 

"  I  thought   I  would   know  the  little   cub  again  but   I 
don't."     Mr.  Johnson  said  further,  that  Mr.  Young  observed 


122  COST    OF    GIFT    TO    No.    6. 

that  life  was  a  sad,  sad  thing — "  because  the  joy  of  every  new 
marriage  a  man  contracted  was  so  apt  to  be  blighted  by  the  in 
opportune  funeral  of  a  less  recent  bride."  And  Mr.  Johnson 
said  that  while  he  and  Mr.  Young  were  pleasantly  conversing 
in  private,  one  of  the  Mrs.  Youngs  came  in  and  demanded  a 
breast-pin,  remarking  that  she  had  found  out  that  he  had  been 
giving  a  breast-pin  to  No.  6,  and  she,  for  one,  did  not  propose 
to  let  this  partiality  go  on  without  making  a  satisfactory 
amount  of  trouble  about  it.  Mr.  Young  reminded  her  that 
there  was  a  stranger  present.  Mrs.  Young  said  that  if  the 
state  of  things  inside  the  house  was  not  agreeable  to  the 
stranger,  he  could  find  room  outside.  Mr.  Young  promised  the 
breast-pin,  and  she  went  away.  But  in  a  minute  or  two 
another  Mrs.  Young  came  in  and  demanded  a  breast-pin.  Mr. 
Young  began  a  remonstrance,  but  Mrs.  Young  cut  him  short. 
She  said  No.  6  had  got  one,  and  No.  11  was  promised  one, 
and  it  was  "  no  use  for  him  to  try  to  impose  on  her — she  lioped 
she  knew  her  rights."  lie  gave  his  promise,  and  she  went. 
And  presently  three  Mrs.  Youngs  entered  in  a  body  and  opened 
on  their  husband  a  tempest  of  tears,  abuse,  and  entreaty. 
They  had  heard  all  about  No.  6,  No.  11,  and  No.  14.  Three 
more  breast-pins  were  promised.  They  were  hardly  gone 
when  nine  more  Mrs.  Youngs  filed  into  the  presence,  and  a 
new  tempest  burst  forth  and  raged  round  about  the  prophet 
and  his  guest.  Nine  breast-pins  were  promised,  and  the 
weird  sisters  filed  out  again.  And  in  came  eleven  more, 
weeping  and  wailing  and  gnashing  their  teeth.  Eleven  prom 
ised  breast-pins  purchased  peace  once  more. 

"  That  is  a  specimen,"  said  Mr.  Young.  "  You  see  how  it 
is.  You  see  what  a  life  I  lead.  A  man  ca/rCt  be  wise  all  the 
time.  In  a  heedless  moment  I  gave  my  darling  No.  6 — excuse 
my  calling  her  thus,  as  her  other  name  has  escaped  rne  for  the 
moment — a  breast-pin.  It  was  only  worth  twenty-five  dollars 
— that  is,  apparently  that  was  its  whole  cost — but  its  ultimate 
cost  was  inevitably  bound  to  be  a  good  deal  more.  You  your- 
eelf  have  seen  it  climb  up  to  six  hundred  and  fifty  dollars — 
and  alas,  even  that  is  not  the  end !  For  I  have  wives  all  over 


EFFECT  OF  A  PE  NN  Y-  W  HI  STLE  GIFT.    123 

this  Territory  of  Utah.  I  have  dozens  of  wives  whose  num 
bers,  even,  I  do  not  know  without  looking  in  the  family  Bible. 
They  are  scattered  far  and  wide  among  the  mountains  and 
valleys  of  rny  realm.  And  mark  you,  every  solitary  one  of 
them  will  hear  of  this  wretched  breast  pin,  and  every  last  one 
of  them  will  have  one  or  die.  No.  6's  breast  pin  will  cost 
me  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  before  I  see  the  end  of  it. 
And  these  creatures  will  compare  these  pins  together,  and  if 
one  is  a  shade  finer  than  the  rest,  they  will  all  be  thrown  on 
my  hands,  and  I  will  have  to  order  a  new  lot  to  keep  peace  in 
the  family.  Sir,  you  probably  did  not  know  it,  but  all  the 
time  you  were  present  with  my  children  your  every  movement 
was  watched  by  vigilant  servitors  of  mine.  If  you  had 
offered  to  give  a  child  a  dime,  or  a  stick  of  candy,  or  any  trifle 
of  the  kind,  you  would  have  been  snatched  out  of  the  house 
instantly,  provided  it  could  be  done  before  your  gift  left  your 
hand.  Otherwise  it  would  be  absolutely  necessary  for  you  to 
make  an  exactly  similar  gift  to  all  my  children — and  knowing 
by  experience  the  importance  of  the  thing,  I  would  have  stood 
by  and  seen  to  it  myself  that  you  did  it,  and  did  it  thoroughly. 
Once  a  gentleman  gave  one  of  my  children  a  tin  whistle — a 
veritable  invention  of  Satan,  sir,  and  one  which  I  have  an  un 
speakable  horror  of,  and  so  would  you  if  you  had  eighty  or 
ninety  children  in  your  house.  But  the  deed  was  done — the 
man  escaped.  I  knew  what  the  result  was  going  to  be,  and  I 
thirsted  for  vengeance.  I  ordered  out  a  flock  of  Destroying 
Angels,  and  they  hunted  the  man  far  into  the  fastnesses  of  the* 
Nevada  mountains.  But  they  never  caught  him.  I  am  not 
cruel,  sir — I  am  not  vindictive  except  when  sorely  outraged — 
but  if  I  had  caught  him,  sir,  so  help  me  Joseph  Smith,  I 
would  have  locked  him  into  the  nursery  till  the  brats  whistled 
him  to  death.  By  the  slaughtered  body  of  St.  Parley  Pratt 
(whom  God  assoil  1)  there  was  never  anything  on  this  earth 
like  it !  /knew  who  gave  the  whistle  to  the  child,  but  I  could 
not  make  those  jealous  mothers  believe  me.  They  believed  / 
did  it,  and  the  result  was  just  what  any  man  of  reflection 
could  have  foreseen :  I  had  to  order  a  hundred  and  ten 


FATHEEING  THE  FOUNDLINGS. 


whistles — I  tliink  we  had  a  hundred  and  ten  children  in  the 
house  then,  but  some  of  them  are  off  at  college  now — I  had 
to  order  a  hundred  and  ten  of  those  shrieking  things,  and  I 
wish  I  may  never  speak  another  word  if  we  didn't  have  to 
talk  on  our  fingers  entirely,  from  that  time  forth  until  the 
children  got  tired  of  the  whistles.  And  if  ever  another  man 
gives  a  whistle  to  a  child  of  mine  and  I  get  my  hands  on  him, 
I  will  hang  him  higher  than  Hainan  !  That  is  the  word  with 
the  bark  on  it!  Shade  of  Nephi!  You  don't  know  any 
thing  about  married  life.  I  am  rich,  and  everybody  knows  it. 
I  am  benevolent,  and  everybody  takes  advantage  of  it.  I  have 
a  strong  fatherly  instinct  and  all  the  foundlings  are  foisted  on 
me.  Every  time  a  woman  wants  to  do  well  by  her  darling, 
she  puzzles  her  brain  to  cipher  out  some  scheme  for  getting 


REMARKABLE     RESEMBLANCE. 


it  into  my  hands.  Why,  sir,  a  woman  came  here  once  with  a 
child  of  a  curious  lifeless  sort  of  complexion  (and  so  had  the 
woman),  and  swore  that  the  child  was  mine  and  she  my  wife — 


LARGE    FAMILIES    EXPENSIVE    LUXURIES.        125 

that  I  had  married  her  at  such-and-such  a  time  in  such-and- 
such  a  place,  but  she  had  forgotten  her  number,  and  of  course 
I  could  not  remember  her  name.  AVell,  sir,  she  called  my 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  child  looked  like  me,  and  really 
it  did  seem  to  resemble  me — a  common  thing  in  the  Terri 
tory — and,  to  cut  the  story  short,  I  put  it  in  my  nursery,  and 
she  left.  And  by  the  ghost  of  Orson  Hyde,  when  they  came 
to  wash  the  paint  off  that  child  it  was  an  Injun !  Bless  my 
soul,  you  don't  know  anything  about  married  life.  It  is  a 
perfect  dog's  life,  sir — a  perfect  dog's  life.  You  can't  econo 
mize.  It  isn't  possible.  I  have  tried  keeping  one  set  of  bridal 
attire  for  all  occasions.  But  it  is  of  no  use.  First  you'll  many 
a  combination  of  calico  and  consumption  that's  as  thin  as  a 
rail,  and  next  you'll  get  a  creature  that's  nothing  more  than 
the  dropsy  in  disguise,  and  then  you've  got  to  eke  out  that 
bridal  dress  with  an  old  balloon.  That  is  the  way  it  goes. 
And  think  of  the  wash-bill — (excuse  these  tears) — nine  hun 
dred  and  eighty-four  pieces  a  week  !  No,  sir,  there  is  no  such 
a  thing  as  economy  in  a  family  like  mine.  Why,  just  the  one 
item  of  cradles — think  of  it !  And  vermifuge !  Soothing 
syrup  !  Teething  rings !  And  i  papa's  watches '  for  the 
babies  to  play  with !  And  things  to  scratch  the  furni 
ture  with !  And  lucifer  matches  for  them  to  eat,  and 
pieces  of  glass  to  cut  themselves  with  !  The  item  of  glass 
alone  would  support  your  family,  I  venture  to  say,  sir.  Let 
me  scrimp  and  squeeze  all  I  can,  I  still  can't  get  ahead  as  fast 
as  I  feel  I  ought  to,  with  my  opportunities.  Bless  you,  sir,  at 
a  time  when  I  had  seventy-two  wives  in  this  house,  I  groaned 
under  the  pressure  of  keeping  thousands  of  dollars  tied  up  in 
seventy-two  bedsteads  when  the  money  ought  to  have  been 
out  at  interest ;  and  I  jnst  sold  out  the  whole  stock,  sir,  at  a 
sacrifice,  and  built  a  bedstead  seven  feet  long  and  ninety-six 
feet  wide.  But  it  was  a  failure,  sir.  I  could  not  sleep.  It 
appeared  to  me  that  the  whole  seventy-two  women  snored  at 
once.  The  roar  was  deafening.  And  then  the  danger  of  it ! 
That  was  what  I  was  looking  at.  They  would  all  draw  in 
their  breath  at  once,  and  you  could  actually  see  the  walls  of 


126 


AN    ATTEMPT    AT    ECONOMY. 


the  house  suck  in — and  then  they  would  all   exhale   their 

breath  at  once,  and  you 
could  see  the  walls  swell 
out,  and  strain,  and  hear 
the  rafters  crack,  and  the 
shingles  grind  together. 
My  friend,  take  an  old 
man's  advice,  and  don't 
encumber  yourself  with 
a  large  family — mind,  I 
tell  you,  don't  do  it.  In 
a  small  family,  and  in  a 
small  family  only,  you 
will  find  that  comfort 
and  that  peace  of  mind 
which  are  the  best  at  last 
of  the  blessings  this 
world  is  able  to  afford 
us,  and  for  the  lack  of 
which  no  accumulation 
of  wealth,  and  no  acqui- 
sition  of  fame,  power,  and 
greatness  can  ever  com 
pensate  us.  Take  my 
word  for  it,  ten  or  eleven 
wives  is  all  you  need- 
never  go  over  it." 

Some  instinct  or  other 
made  me  set  this  John 
son  down  as  being  unre 
liable.  And  yet  he  was 
a  very  entertaining  per 
son,  and  I  doubt  if  some 
of  the  information  he 
gave  us  could  have  been 
acquired  from  any  other 
source.  lie  was  a  pleas 
ant  contrast  to  those  reticent  Mormons. 


CHAPTEE    XVI. 

ALL  men  have  heard  of  the  Mormon  Bible,  but  few  except 
the  "  elect "  have  seen  it,  or,  at  least,  taken  the  trouble 
to  read  it.  I  brought  away  a  copy  from  Salt  Lake.  The  book 
is  a  curiosity  to  me,  it  is  such  a  pretentious  affair,  and  yet  so 
"  slow,"  so  sleepy ;  such  an  insipid  mess  of  inspiration.  It 
is  chloroform  in  print.  If  Joseph  Smith  composed  this  book, 
the  act  was  a  miracle — keeping  awake  while  he  did  it  was,  at 
any  rate.  If  he,  according  to  tradition,  merely  translated  it 
from  certain  ancient  and  mysteriously-engraved  plates  of  cop 
per,  which  he  declares  he  found  under  a  stone,  in  an  out-of- 
the-way  locality,  the  work  of  translating  was  equally  a  mira 
cle,  for  the  same  reason. 

The  book  seems  to  be  merely  a  prosy  detail  of  imaginary 
history,  with  the  Old  Testament  for  a  model ;  followed  by 
a  tedious  plagiarism  of  the  New  Testament.  The  author 
labored  to  give  his  words  and  phrases  the  quaint,  old-fashioned 
sound  and  structure  of  our  King  James's  translation  of  the 
Scriptures ;  and  the  result  is  a  mongrel — half  modern  glib- 
ness,  and  half  ancient  simplicity  and  gravity.  The  latter  is 
awkward  and  constrained ;  the  former  natural,  but  grotesque 
by  the  contrast.  Whenever  he  found  his  speech  growing  too 
modern — which  was  about  every  sentence  or  two — he  ladled  in 
a  few  such  Scriptural  phrases  as  "  exceeding  sore,"  "  and  it  came 
to  pass,"  etc.,  and  made  things  satisfactory  again.  "  And  it 


128  THE    BOOK    OF    MORMON. 

came  to  pass  "  was  his  pet.     If  he  had  left  that  out,  his  Bible 
would  have  been  only  a  pamphlet. 
The  title-page  reads  as  follows : 

THE  BOOK  OF  MORMON:  AN  ACCOUNT  WRITTEN  BY  THE  HAND  OF  MOR 
MON,  UPON  PLATES  TAKEN  FROM  THE  PLATES  OF  NEPHI. 

Wherefore  it  is  an  abridgment  of  the  record  of  the  people  of  Nephi, 
and  also  of  the  Lamanites  ;  written  to  the  Lamanites,  who  are  a  remnant  of 
the  House  of  Israel ;  and  also  to  Jew  and  Gentile  ;  written  by  way  of  com 
mandment,  and  also  by  the  spirit  of  prophecy  and  of  revelation.  Written 
and  sealed  up,  and  hid  up  unto  the  Lord,  that  they  might  not  be  destroyed  ; 
to  come  forth  by  the  gift  and  power  of  God  unto  the  interpretation  thereof ; 
sealed  by  the  hand  of  Moroni,  and  hid  up  unto  the  Lord,  to  come  forth  in 
due  time  by  the  way  of  Gentile ;  the  interpretation  thereof  by  the  gift  of 
God.  An  abridgment  taken  from  the  Book  of  Ether  also  ;  which  is  a 
record  of  the  people  of  Jared ;  who  were  scattered  at  the  time  the  Lord 
confounded  the  language  of  the  people  when  they  were  building  a  tower  to 
get  to  Heaven. 

"  Hid  up  "  is  good.  And  so  is  "  wherefore" — though  wrhy 
"  wherefore"  ?  Any  other  word  would  have  answered  as  well 
— though  in  truth  it  would  not  have  sounded  so  Scriptural. 

Next  comes 

/ 

THE  TESTIMONY  OF  THREE  WITNESSES. 

Be  it  known  unto  all  nations,  kindreds,  tongues,  and  people  unto  whom 
this  work  shall  come,  that  we,  through  the  grace  of  God  the  Father,  and 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  have  seen  the  plates  which  contain  this  record,  which 
is  a  record  of  the  people  of  Nephi,  and  also  of  the  Lamanites,  their  breth 
ren,  and  also  of  the  people  of  Jared,  who  came  from  the  tower  of  which 
hath  been  spoken  ;  and  we  also  know  that  they  have  been  translated  by  the 
gift  and  power  of  God,  for  His  voice  hath  declared  it  unto  us ;  wherefore 
we  know  of  a  surety  that  the  work  is  true.  And  we  also  testify  that  we 
have  seen  the  engravings  which  are  upon  the  plates ;  and  they  have  been 
shown  unto  us  by  the  power  of  God,  and  not  of  man.  And  we  declare  with 
words  of  soberness,  that  an  angel  of  God  came  down  from  heaven,  and  he 
brought  and  laid  before  our  eyes,  that  we  beheld  and  saw  the  plates,  and 
the  engravings  thereon ;  and  we  know  that  it  is  by  the  grace  of  God  the 
Father,  and  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  that  we  beheld  and  bear  record  that 
these  things  are  true  ;  and  it  is  marvellous  in  our  eyes ;  nevertheless  the 
voice  of  the  Lord  commanded  us  that  we  should  bear  record  of  it ;  where 
fore,  to  be  obedient  unto  the  commandments  of  God,  we  bear  testimony  of 


INDISPUTABLE    EVIDENCE.  129 

these  things.  And  we  know  that  if  we  are  faithful  in  Christ,  we  shall  rid 
our  garments  of  the  blood  of  all  men,  and  be  found  spotless  before  the 
judgment-seat  of  Christ,  and  shall  dwell  with  Him  eternally  in  the  heavens. 
And  the  honor  be  to  the  Father,  and  to  the  Son,  and  to  the  Holy  Ghost, 
which  is  one  God.  Amen. 

OLIVER  COWDERY, 
DAVID  WHITMER, 
MABTIN  HARRIS. 

Some  people  have  to  have  a  world  of  evidence  before  they 
can  come  anywhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  believing  any 
thing  ;  but  for  me,  when  a  man  tells  me  that  he  has  "  seen  the 
engravings  which  are  upon  the  plates,"  and  not  only  that,  but 
an  angel  was  there  at  the  time,  and  saw  him  see  them,  and 
probably  took  his  receipt  for  it,  I  am  very  far  on  the  road  to 
conviction,  no  matter  whether  I  ever  heard  of  that  man  before 
or  not,  and  even  if  I  do  not  know  the  name  of  the  angel,  or 
his  nationality  either. 
Next  is  this : 

AND  ALSO  THE  TESTIMONY  OF  EIGHT  WITNESSES. 

Be  it  known  unto  all  nations,  kindreds,  tongues,  and  people  unto  whom 
this  work  shall  come,  that  Joseph  Smith,  Jr.,  the  translator  of  this  work, 
has  shown  unto  us  the  plates  of  which  hath  been  spoken,  which  have  the 
appearance  of  gold ;  and  as  many  of  the  leaves  as  the  said  Smith  has  trans 
lated,  we  did  handle  with  our  hands ;  and  we  also  saw  the  engravings 
thereon,  all  of  which  has  the  appearance  of  ancient  work,  and  of  curious 
workmanship.  And  this  we  bear  record  with  words  of  soberness,  that  the  said 
Smith  has  shown  unto  us,  for  we  have  seen  and  hefted,  and  know  of  a 
surety  that  the  said  Smith  has  got  the  plates  of  which  we  have  spoken. 
And  we  give  our  names  unto  the  world,  to  witness  unto  the  world  that  which 
we  have  seen ;  and  we  lie  not,  God  bearing  witness  of  it. 

CHRISTIAN  WHITMER,  HIRAM  PAGE, 

JACOB  WHITMER,  JOSEPH  SMITH,  SR., 

PETER  WHITMER,  JR.,  HYRUM  SMITH, 

JOHN  WHITMER,  SAMUEL  H.  SMITH. 


And  when  I  am  far  on  the  road  to  conviction,  and  eight 
men,  be  they  grammatical  or  otherwise,  come  forward  and  tell 
me  that  they  have  seen  the  plates  too;  and  not  only  seen 

»t 


130  EARLY    MORMONS    ON    A    SPREE. 

those  plates  but  "  hefted  "  them,  I  am  convinced.  I  could  not 
feel  more  satisfied  and  at  rest  if  the  entire  Whitmer  family 
had  testified. 

The  Mormon  Bible  consists  of  fifteen  "  books  " — being  the 
books  of  Jacob,  Enos,  Jarom,  Omni,  Mosiah,  Zeniff,  Alma, 
Helaman,  Ether,  Moroni,  two  "  books  "  of  Mormon,  and  three 
of  Nephi. 

In  the  first  book  of  Nephi  is  a  plagiarism  of  the  Old  Tes 
tament,  which  gives  an  account  of  the  exodus  from  Jerusalem 
of  the  "  children  of  Lehi "  ;  and  it  goes  on  to  tell  of  their 
wanderings  in  the  wilderness,  during  eight  years,  and  their 
supernatural  protection  by  one  of  their  number,  a  party  by  the 
name  of  Nephi.  They  finally  reached  the  land  of  "  Bounti 
ful,"  and  camped  by  the  sea.  After  they  had  remained  there 
"  for  the  space  of  many  days  " — which  is  more  Scriptural  than 
definite — Nephi  was  commanded  from  on  high  to  build  a  ship 
wherein  to  "  carry  the  people  across  the  waters."  He  traves 
tied  Noah's  ark — but  he  obeyed  orders  in  the  matter  of  the 
plan.  He  finished  the  ship  in  a  single  day,  while  his  breth 
ren  stood  by  and  made  fun  of  it — and  of  him,  too — "  saying, 
our  brother  is  a  fool,  for  he  thinketh  that  he  can  build  a  ship." 
They  did  not  wait  for  the  timbers  to  dry,  but  the  whole  tribe 
or  nation  sailed  the  next  day.  Then  a  bit  of  genuine  nature 
cropped  out,  and  is  revealed  by  outspoken  Kephi  with  Script 
ural  frankness — they  all  got  on  a  spree!  They,  "and  also 
their  wives,  began  to  make  themselves  merry,  insomuch  that 
they  began  to  dance,  and  to  sing,  and  to  speak  with  much 
rudeness ;  yea,  they  wrere  lifted  up  unto  exceeding  rudeness." 

Nephi  tried  to  stop  these  scandalous  proceedings ;  but  they 
tied  him  neck  and  heels,  and  went  on  with  their  lark.  But 
observe  how  Nephi  the  prophet  circumvented  them  by  the  aid 
of  the  invisible  powers  : 

And  it  came  to  pass  that  after  they  had  bound  me,  insomuch  that  I  could 
not  move,  the  compass,  which  had  been  prepared  of  the  Lord,  did  cease  to 
work  ;  wherefore,  they  knew  not  whither  they  should  steer  the  ship,  inso 
much  that  there  arose  a  great  storm,  yea,  a  great  and  terrible  tempest,  and 


A    MIRACLE    WROUGHT. 


131 


we  were  driven  back  upon  the  waters  for  the  space  of  three  days  ;  and  they 
began  to  be  frightened  exceedingly,  lest  they  should  be  drowned  in  the  sea ; 
nevertheless  they  did  not  loose  me.  And  on  the  fourth  day,  which  we  had 
been  driven  back,  the  tempest  began  to  be  exceeding  sore. 

And  it  came  to  pass  that  we  were  about  to  be  swallowed  up  in  the 
depths  of  the  sea. 

Then  they  untied  him. 

And  it  came  to  pass  after  they  had  loosed  me,  behold,  I  took  the  compass, 
and  it  did  work  whither  I  desired  it.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  I  prayed 
unto  the  Lord  ;  and  after  I  had  prayed,  the  winds  did  cease,  and  the  storm 
did  cease,  and  there  was  a  great  calm. 


THE   MIRACULOUS   COMPASS. 


Equipped  with  their  compass,  these  ancients  appear  to  have 
had  the  advantage  of  Koah. 


132  INTRODUCTION    OF    POLYGAMY. 

Their  voyage  was  toward  a  "promised  land" — the  only 
name  they  give  it.  They  reached  it  in  safety. 

Polygamy  is  a  recent  feature  in  the  Mormon  religion,  and 
was  added  by  Brigham  Young  after  Joseph  Smith's  death. 
Before  that,  it  was  regarded  as  an  "  abomination."  This  verso 
from  the  Mormon  Bible  occurs  in  Chapter  II.  of  the  book  of 
Jacob : 

For  behold,  thus  saith  the  Lord,  this  people  begin  to  wax  in  iniquity  ; 
they  understand  not  the  Scriptures  ;  for  they  seek  to  excuse  themselves  in 
committing  whoredoms,  because  of  the  things  which  were  written  concern 
ing  David,  and  Solomon  his  son.  Behold,  David  and  Solomon  truly  had 
many  wives  and  concubines,  which  thing  was  abominable  before  me,  saith 
the  Lord  ;  wherefore,  thus  saith  the  Lord,  I  have  led  this  people  forth  out 
of  the  land  of  Jerusalem,  by  the  power  of  mine  arm,  that  I  might  raise  up 
unto  me  a  righteous  branch  from  the  fruit  of  the  loins  of  Joseph.  Where 
fore,  I  the  Lord  God,  will  not  suffer  that  this  people  shall  do  like  unto  them 
of  old. 

However,  the  project  failed — or  at  least  the  modern  Mor 
mon  end  of  it — for  Brigham  "  suffers  "  it.  This  verse  is  from 
the  same  chapter : 

Behold,  the  Lamanites  your  brethren,  whom  ye  hate,  because  of  their 
filthiness  and  the  cursings  which  hath  come  upon  their  skins,  are  more 
righteous  than  you ;  for  they  have  not  forgotten  the  commandment  of  the 
Lord,  which  was  given  unto  our  fathers,  that  they  should  have,  save  it  were 
one  wife  ;  and  concubines  they  should  have  none. 

The  following  verse  (from  Chapter  IX.  of  the  Book  of 
Neplii)  appears  to  contain  information  not  familiar  to  every 
body : 

And  now  it  came  to  pass  that  when  Jesus  had  ascended  into  heaven,  the 
multitude  did  disperse,  and  every  man  did  take  his  wife  and  his  children, 
and  did  return  to  his  own  home. 

And  it  came  to  pass  that  on  the  morrow,  when  the  multitude  was  gath 
ered  together,  behold,  Nephi  and  his  brother  whom  he  had  raised  from  the 
dead,  whose  name  was  Timothy,  and  also  his  son,  whose  name  was  Jonas, 
and  also  Mathoni,  and  Mathonihah,  his  brother,  and  Kumen,  and  Kumen. 
onhi,  and  Jeremiah,  and  Shemnon,  and  Jonas,  and  Zedekiah,  and  Isaiah; 
now  these  were  the  names  of  the  disciples  whom  Jesus  had  chosen. 


NOT    ELSEWHERE    RECORDED.  133 

In  order  that  the  reader  may  observe  how  much  more 
grandeur  and  picturesqueness  (as  seen  by  these  Mormon  twelve) 
accompanied  one  of  the  tenderest  episodes  in  the  life  of  our 
Saviour  than  other  eyes  seem  to  have  been  aware  of,  I  quote 
the  following  from  the  same  "  book  " — Nephi : 

And  it  came  to  pass  that  Jesus  spake  unto  them,  and  bade  them  arise. 
And  they  arose  from  the  earth,  and  He  said  unto  them,  Blessed  are  ye  be 
cause  of  your  faith.  And  now  behold,  My  joy  is  full.  And  when  He  had 
said  these  words,  He  wept,  and  the  multitude  bear  record  of  it,  and  He  took 
their  little  children,  one  by  one,  and  blessed  them,  and  prayed  unto  the 
Father  for  them.  And  when  He  had  done  this  He  wept  again,  and  He  spake 
unto  the  multitude,  and  saith  unto  them,  Behold  your  little  ones.  And  as 
they  looked  to  behold,  they  cast  their  eyes  toward  heaven,  and  they  saw 
the  heavens  open,  and  they  saw  angels  descending  out  of  heaven  as  it  were, 
in  the  midst  of  tire  ;  and  they  came  down  and  encircled  those  little  ones 
about,  and  they  were  encircled  about  with  fire  ;  and  the  angels  did  minister 
unto  them,  and  the  multitude  did  see  and  hear  and  bear  record ;  and  they 
know  that  their  record  is  true,  for  they  all  of  them  did  see  and  hear,  every 
man  for  himself ;  and  they  were  in  number  about  two  thousand  and  five 
hundred  souls  ;  and  they  did  consist  of  men,  women,  and  children. 

And  what  else  would  they  be  likely  to  consist  of? 

The  Book  of  Ether  is  an  incomprehensible  medley  of  "his 
tory,"  much  of  it  relating  to  battles  and  sieges  among  peoples 
whom  the  reader  has  possibly  never  heard  of;  and  who  inhabited 
a  country  which  is  not  set  down  in  the  geography.  There  was 
a  King  with  the  remarkable  name  of  Coriantumr,  and  he 
warred  with  Shared,  and  Lib,  and  Shiz,  and  others,  in  the 
"  plains  of  Heshlon  "  ;  and  the  "  valley  of  Gilgal "  ;  and  the 
"  wilderness  of  Akish  "  ;  and  the  "  land  of  Moran  "  ;  and  the 
"  plains  of  Agosh " ;  and  "  Ogath,"  and  "  Bamah,"  and  the 
"  land  of  Corihor,"  and  the  "  hill  Comnor,"  by  "  the  waters 
of  Kipliancum,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc.  "And  it  came  to  pass,"  after 
a  deal  of  h'ghting,  that  Coriantumr,  upon  making  calculation 
of  his  losses,  found  that  "  there  had  been  slain  two  millions  of 
mighty  men,  and  also  their  wives  and  their  children  " — say 
5,000,000  or  6,000,000  in  all—"  and  he  began  to  sorrow  in  his 
heart."  Unquestionably  it  was  time.  So  he  wrote  to  Shiz, 
asking  a  cessation  of  hostilities,  and  offering  to  give  up  his 


134:  AN    ANCIENT    BATTLE. 

kingdom  to  save  his  people.  Shiz  declined,  except  upon  con 
dition  that  Coriantumr  would  come  and  let  him  cut  his  head 
off  first — a  thing  which  Coriantumr  would  not  do.  Then 
there  was  more  fighting  for  a  season  ;  then  four  years  were  de 
voted  to  gathering  the  forces  for  a  final  struggle — after  which 
ensued  a  battle,  which,  I  take  it,  is  the  most  remarkable  set 
forth  in  history, — except,  perhaps,  that  of  the  Kilkenny  cats, 
which  it  resembles  in  some  respects.  This  is  the  account  of 
the  gathering  and  the  battle : 

7.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  they  did  gather  together  all  the  people,  upon 
all  the  face  of  the  land,  who  had  not  been  slain,  save  it  was  Ether.     And  it 
came  to  pass  that  Ether  did  behold  all  the  doings  of  the  people  ;  and  he  be 
held  that  the  people  who  were  for  Coriantumr,  were  gathered  together  to 
the  army  of  Coriantumr ;  and  the  people  who  were  for  Shiz,  were  gathered 
together  to  the  army  of  Shiz ;  wherefore  they  were  for  the  space  of  four 
years  gathering  together  the  people,  that  they  might  get  all  who  were  upon 
the  face  of  the  land,  and  that  they  might  receive  all  the  strength  which  it 
was  possible  that  they  could  receive.     And  it  came  to  pass  that  when  they 
were  all  gathered  together,  every  one  to  the  army  which  he  would,  with 
their  wives  and  their  children ;  both  men,  women,  and  children  being  armed 
with  weapons  of  war,  having  shields,  and  breast-plates,  and  head-plates,  and 
being  clothed  after  the  manner  of  war,  they  did  march  forth  one  against 
another,  to  battle  ;  and  they  fought  all  that  day,  and  conquered  not.     And  it 
came  to  pass  that  when  it  was  night  they  were  weary,  and  retired  to  their 
camps  ;  and  after  they  had  retired  to  their  camps,  they  took  up  a  howling 
and  a  lamentation  for  the  loss  of  the  slain  of  their  people ;  and  so  great 
were  their  cries,  their  howlings  and  lamentations,  that  it  did  rend  the  air 
exceedingly.     And  it  came  to  pass  that  on  the  morrow  they  did  go  again  to 
battle,  and  great  and  terrible  was  that  day  ;  nevertheless  they  conquered  not, 
and  when  the  night  came  again,  they  did  rend  the  air  with  their  cries,  and 
their  howlings,  and  their   mournings,  for  the  loss  of  the  slain  of  their 
people. 

8.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  Coriantumr  wrote  again  an  epistle  unto  Shiz, 
desiring  that  he  would  not  come  again  to  battle,  but  that  he  would  take  the 
kingdom,  and  spare  the  lives  of  the  people.    But  behold,  the  Spirit  of  the 
Lord  had  ceased  striving  with  them,  and  Satan  had  full  power  over  the 
hearts  of  the  people,  for  they  were  given  up  unto  the  hardness  of  their 
hearts,  and  the  blindness  of  their  minds  that  they  might   be  destroyed; 
wherefore  they  went  again  to  battle.     And  it  came  to  pass  that  they  fought 
all  that  day,  and  when  the  night  came  they  slept  upon  their  swords  ;  and  on 
the  morrow  they  fought  even  until  the  night  came  ;  and  when  the  night 
came  they  were  drunken  with  anger,  even  as  a  man  who  is  drunken  with 


ORIGINAL    KILKENNY    CATS.  135 

wine ;  and  they  slept  again  upon  their  swords  ;  and  on  the  morrow  they 
fought  again ;  and  when  the  night  came  they  had  all  fallen  by  the  sword 
save  it  were  fifty  and  two  of  the  people  of  Coriantunir,  and  sixty  and  nine 
of  the  people  of  Shiz.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  they  slept  upon  their 
swords  that  night,  and  on  the  morrow  they  fought  again,  and  they  contended 
in  their  mights  with  their  swords,  and  with  their  shields,  all  that  day  ;  and 
when  the  night  came  there  were  thirty  and  two  of  the  people  of  Shiz,  and 
twenty  and  seven  of  the  people  of  Coriantumr. 

9.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  they  ate  and  slept,  and  prepared  for  death  on 
the  morrow.  And  they  were  large  and  mighty  men,  as  to  the  strength  of 
men.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  they  fought  for  the  space  of  three  hours, 
and  they  fainted  with  the  loss  of  blood.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  when 
the  men  of  Coriantumr  had  received  sufficient  strength,  that  they  could 
walk,  they  were  about  to  flee  for  their  lives,  but  behold,  Shiz  arose, 
and  also  his  men,  and  he  swore  in  his  wrath  that  he  would  slay  Coriantumr, 
or  he  would  perish  by  the  sword  :  wherefore  he  did  pursue  them,  and  on 
the  morrow  he  did  overtake  them ;  and  they  fought  again  with  the  sword. 
And  it  came  to  pass  that  when  they  had  all  fallen  by  the  sword,  save  it 
were  Coriantumr  and  Shiz,  behold  Shiz  had  fainted  with  loss  of  blood. 
And  it  came  to  pass  that  when  Coriantumr  had  leaned  upon  his  sword,  that 
he  rested  a  little,  he  smote  off  the  head  of  Shiz.  And  it  came  to  pass  that 
after  he  had  smote  off  the  head  of  Shiz,  that  Shiz  raised  upon  his  hands 
and  fell ;  and  after  that  he  had  struggled  for  breath,  he  died.  And  it  came 
to  pass  that  Coriantumr  fell  to  the  earth,  and  became  as  if  he  had  no 
life.  And  the  Lord  spake  unto  Ether,  and  said  unto  him,  go  forth.  And  he 
went  forth,  and  beheld  that  the  words  of  the  Lord  had  all  been  fulfilled ; 
and  he  finished  his  record ;  and  the  hundredth  part  I  have  not  written. 

It  seems  a  pity  lie  did  not  finish,  for  after  all  his  dreary 
former  chapters  of  commonplace,  he  stopped  just  as  he  was  in 
danger  of  becoming  interesting. 

The  Mormon  Bible  is  rather  stupid  and  tiresome  to  read, 
but  there  is  nothing  vicious  in  its  teachings.  Its  code  of 
morals  is  unobjectionable — it  is  "  smouched  "  *  from  the  New 
Testament  and  no  credit  given. 

*Milton. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

AT  the  end  of  our  two  days'  sojourn,  we  left  Great  Salt 
Lake  City  hearty  and  well  fed  and  happy — physically 
superb  but  not  so  very  much  wiser,  as  regards  the  "  Mormon 
question,"  than  we  were  when  we  arrived,  perhaps.  We  had 
a  deal  more  "  information  "  than  we  had  before,  of  course,  but 
we  did  not  know  what  portion  of  it  was  reliable  and  what  was 
not — for  it  all  came  from  acquaintances  of  a  day — strangers, 
strictly  speaking.  We  were  told,  for  instance,  that  the  dreadful 
"  Mountain  Meadows  Massacre  "  was  the  work  of  the  Indians 
entirely,  and  that  the  Gentiles  had  meanly  tried  to  fasten  it 
upon  the  Mormons ;  we  were  told,  likewise,  that  the  Indians 
were  to  blame,  partly,  and  partly  the  Mormons ;  and  we  were 
told,  likewise,  and  just  as  positively,  that  the  Mormons  were 
almost  if  not  wholly  and  completely  responsible  for  that  most 
treacherous  and  pitiless  butchery.  "We  got  the  story  in  all 
these  different  shapes,  but  it  was  not  till  several  years  after 
ward  that  Mrs.  Waite's  book,  "  The  Mormon  Prophet,"  came 
out  with  Judge  Cradlebaugh's  trial  of  the  accused  parties  in 
it  and  revealed  the  truth  that  the  latter  version  was  the  cor 
rect  one  and  that  the  Mormons  were  the  assassins.  All  our 
"  information  "  had  three  sides  to  it,  and  so  I  gave  up  the  idea 
that  I  could  settle  the  "  Mormon  question  "  in  two  days.  Still 
I  have  seen  newspaper  correspondents  do  it  in  one. 

I  left  Great  Salt  Lake  a  good  deal  confused  as  to  what 
state  of  things  existed  there — and  sometimes  even  questioning 
in  my  own  mind  whether  a  state  of  things  existed  there  at  all 


IN    A    PIONEER    LAND. 


137 


or  not.  But  presently  I  remembered  with  a  lightening  sense 
of  relief  that  we  had  learned  two  or  three  trivial  things  there 
which  we  could  be  certain  of;  and  so  the  two  days  were  not 
wholly  lost.  For  instance,  we  had  learned  that  we  were  at  last 
in  a  pioneer  land,  in  absolute  and  tangible  reality.  The  high 


THREE  SIDES  TO  A  QUESTION. 

prices  charged  for  trifles  were  eloquent  of  high  freights  and 
bewildering  distances  of  freightage.  In  the  east,  in  those  days, 
the  smallest  moneyed  denomination  was  a  penny  and  it  repre 
sented  the  smallest  purchasable  quantity  of  any  commodity. 
"West  of  Cincinnati  the  smallest  coin  in  use  was  the  silver  five- 
cent  piece  and  no  smaller  quantity  of  an  article  could  be 
bought  than  "  five  cents'  worth."  In  Overland  City  the  low 
est  coin  appeared  to  be  the  ten-cent  piece ;  but  in  Salt  Lake 
there  did  not  seem  to  be  any  money  in  circulation  smaller 
than  a  quarter,  or  any  smaller  quantity  purchasable  of  any 
commodity  than  twenty-five  cents'  worth.  We  had  always 
been  used  to  half  dimes  and  "  five  cents'  worth  "  as  the  mini 
mum  of  financial  negotiations ;  but  in  Salt  Lake  if  one  wanted 
a  cigar,  it  was  a  quarter ;  if  he  wanted  a  chalk  pipe,  it  was  a 


138  THE    INSULTED    BOOT-BLACK. 

quarter ,  if  lie  wanted  a  peach,  or  a  candle,  or  a  newspaper, 
or  a  shave,  or  a  little  Gentile  whiskey  to  rub  on  his  corns  to 
arrest  indigestion  and  keep  him  from  having  the  toothache, 
twenty-five  cents  was  the  price,  every  time.  When  we  looked 
at  the  shot-bag  of  silver,  now  and  then,  we  seemed  to  be 

N.  York.  St.  Louis.      Overland  City.        Salt  Lake  City. 


1  Cent.  5  Cents.  10  Cents.  25  Cents. 

RESULT  OF  HIGH  FREIGHTS. 

wasting  our  substance  in  riotous  living,  but  if  we  referred  to 
the  expense  account  we  could  see  that  we  had  not  been  doing 
anything  of  the  kind.  But  people  easily  get  reconciled  to 
big  money  and  big  prices,  and  fond  and  vain  of  both — it  is  a 
descent  to  little  coins  and  cheap  prices  that  is  hardest  to  bear 
and  slowest  to  take  hold  upon  one's  toleration.  After  a 
month's  acquaintance  with  the  twenty-five  cent  minimum,  the 
average  human  being  is  ready  to  blush  every  time  he  thinks  of 
his  despicable  five-cent  days.  How  sunburnt  with  blushes  I 
used  to  get  in  gaudy  Nevada,  every  time  I  thought  of  my  first 
financial  experience  in  Salt  Lake.  It  was  on  this  wise  (which 
is  a  favorite  expression  of  great  authors,  and  a  very  neat  one, 
too,  but  I  never  hear  anybody  say  on  this  wise  when  they  are 
talking).  A  young  half-breed  with  a  complexion  like  a  yellow- 
jacket  asked  me  if  I  would  have  my  boots  blacked.  It  was 
at  the  Salt  Lake  House  the  morning  after  we  arrived.  I  said 
yes,  and  he  blacked  them.  Then  I  handed  him  a  silver  five- 
cent  piece,  with  the  benevolent  air  of  a  person  who  is  confer 
ring  wealth  and  blessedness  upon  poverty  and  suffering.  The 
yellow-jacket  took  it  with  what  I  judged  to  be  suppressed 
emotion,  and  laid  it  reverently  down  in  the  middle  of  his 
broad  hand.  Then  he  began  to  contemplate  it,  much  as  a 
philosopher  contemplates  a  gnat's  ear  in  the  ample  field  of 


WHITE-SHIBTED    EMIGRANTS. 


139 


his  microscope.  Several  mountaineers,  teamsters,  stage-drivers, 
etc.,  drew  near  and  dropped  into  the  tableau  and  fell  to 
surveying  the  money  with  that  attractive  indifference  to  for 
mality  which  is  noticeable  in  the  hardy  pioneer.  Presently  the 
yellow-jacket  handed  the  half  dime  back  to  me  and  told  me  I 
ought  to  keep  my  money  in  my  pocket-book  instead  of  in 
my  soul,  and  then 
I  wouldn't  get  it 
cramped  and  shriv 
eled  up  so ! 

'What   a  roar  of 


vulgar 


laughter 


A  SHRIVELED   QUARTER. 


there  was!  I  de 
stroyed  the  mongrel 
reptile  on  the  spot, 
but  I  smiled  and 
smiled  all  the  time 
I  was  detaching  his 
scalp,  for  the  re 
mark  he  made  was 
good  for  an  "  In 
jun." 

Yes,  we  had 
learned  in  Salt  Lake 
to  be  charged  great 
prices  without  letting  the  inward  shudder  appear  on  the  sur 
face — for  even  already  we  had  overheard  and  noted  the  tenoi 
of  conversations  among  drivers,  conductors,  and  hostlers,  and 
finally  among  citizens  of  Salt  Lake,  until  we  were  well  aware 
that  these  superior  beings  despised  "emigrants."  We  per 
mitted  no  tell-tale  shudders  and  winces  in  our  countenances, 
for  we  wanted  to  seem  pioneers,  or  Mormons,  half-breeds, 
teamsters,  stage-drivers,  Mountain  Meadow  assassins — anything 
in  the  world  that  the  plains  and  Utah  respected  and  admired— 
but  we  were  wretchedly  ashamed  of  being  "  emigrants,"  and 
sorry  enough  that  we  had  white  shirts  and  could  not  swear  in 
the  presence  of  ladies  without  looking  the  other  way. 

And  many  a  time  in  Nevada,  afterwards,  we  had  occasion 


140 


PITIABLE    IGNORANCE. 


to  remember  with  humiliation  that  we  were  "  emigrants,"  and 
consequently  a  low  and  inferior  sort  of  creatures.  Perhaps 
the  reader  has  visited  Utah,  Nevada,  or  California,  even  in 
these  latter  days,  and  while  communing  with  himself  upon  the 
sorrowful  banishment  of  those  countries  from  what  he  con 
siders  "  the  world,"  has  had  his  wings  clipped  by  finding  that 
he  is  the  one  to  be  pitied,  and  that  there  are  entire  popula 
tions  around  him  ready  and  willing  to  do  it  for  him — yea,  who 

are  complacently  doing  it 
for  him  already,  wherever 
he  steps  his  foot.  Poor 
thing,  they  are  making  fun 
of  his  hat;  and  the  cut  of 
his  New  York  coat ;  and 
his  conscientiousness  about 
his  grammar ;  and  his  feeble 
profanity ;  and  his  consum- 
ingly  ludicrous  ignorance  of 
ores,  shafts,  tunnels,  and 
other  things  which  he  never 
saw  before,  and  never  felt 
enough  interest  in  to  read 
about.  And  all  the  time 
that  he  is  thinking  what  a  sad  fate  it  is  to  be  exiled  to  that 
far  country,  that  lonely  land,  the  citizens  around  him  are  look 
ing  down  on  him  with  a  blighting  compassion  because  he  is 
an  "  emigrant "  instead  of  that  proudest  and  blessedest  crea 
ture  that  exists  on  all  the  earth,  a  "  FORTY-NINER." 

The  accustomed  coach  life  began  again,  now,  and  by  mid 
night  it  almost  seemed  as  if  we  never  had  been  out  of  our 
snuggery  among  the  mail  sacks  at  all.  We  had  made  one  alter 
ation,  however.  We  had  provided  enough  bread,  boiled  ham 
and  hard  boiled  eggs  to  last  double  the  six  hundred  miles  of 
staging  we  had  still  to  do. 

And  it  was  comfort  in  those  succeeding  days  to  sit  up 
and  contemplate  the  majestic  panorama  of  mountains  and 
valleys  spread  out  below  us  and  eat  ham  and  hard  boiled 


AN   OBJECT  OF  PITY. 


WHAT    CONSTITUTES    HAPPINESS. 


141 


eggs  while  our  spiritual  natures  revelled  alternately  in  rain 
bows,  thunderstorms,  and  peerless  sunsets.  Nothing  helps 
scenery  like  ham  and  eggs.  Ham  and  eggs,  and  after  these  a 
pipe — an  old,  rank,  delicious  pipe — ham  and  eggs  and  scenery, 
a  "  down  grade,"  a  flying  coach,  a  fragrant  pipe  and  a  con 
tented  heart — these  make  happiness.  It  is  what  all  the  ages 
have  struggled  for. 


CHAPTEE    XYIII. 

AT  eight  in  the  morning  we  reached  the  remnant  and  ruin 
of  what  had  been  the  important  military  station  of 
"  Camp  Floyd,"  some  forty-five  or  fifty  miles  from  Salt  Lake 
City.  At  four  p.Mvwe  had  doubled  our  distance  and  were 
ninety  or  a  hundred  miles  from  Salt  Lake.  And  now  we 
entered  upon  one  of  that  species  of  deserts  whose  concentrated 
hideousriess  shames  the  diffused  and  diluted  horrors  of  Sahara 
— an  "cdfadU"  desert.  For  sixty-eight  miles  there  was  but 
one  break  in  it.  I  do  not  remember  that  this  was  really  a 
break ;  indeed  it  seems  to  me  that  it  was  nothing  but  a  water 
ing  depot  in  the  midst  of  the  stretch  of  sixty-eight  miles.  If 
my  memory  serves  me,  there  was  no  well  or  spring  at  this 
place,  but  the  water  was  hauled  there  by  mule  and  ox  teams 
from  the  further  side  of  the  desert.  There  was  a  stage  station 
there.  It  was  forty-five  miles  from  the  beginning  of  the 
desert,  and  twenty-three  from  the  end  of  it. 

We  plowed  and  dragged  and  groped  along,  the  whole  live 
long  night,  and  at  the  end  of  this  uncomfortable  twelve  hours 
we  finished  the  forty-five-mile  part  of  the  desert  and  got  to 
'the  stage  station  w^here  the  imported  water  was.  The  sun 
was  just  rising.  It  was  easy  enough  to  cross  a  desert  in  the 
night  while  we  were  asleep ;  and  it  was  pleasant  to  reflect,  in 
the  morning,  that  we  in  actual  person  had  encountered  an 
absolute  desert  and  could  always  speak  knowingly  of  deserts 
in  presence  of  the  ignorant  thenceforward.  And  it  was  pleas- 


A    REAL    DESERT    BY    DAYLIGHT.  143 

ant  also  to  reflect  that  this  was  not  an  obscure,  back  country 
desert,  but  a  very  celebrated  one,  the  metropolis  itself,  as  you 
may  say.  All  this  was  very  well  and  very  comfortable  and 
satisfactory — but  now  we  were  to  cross  a  desert  in  daylight. 
This  was  fine — novel — romantic — dramatically  adventurous — 
this,  indeed,  was  worth  living  for,  worth  traveling  for !  "We 
would  write  home  all  about  it. 

This  enthusiasm,  this  stern  thirst  for  adventure,  wilted 
under  the  sultry  August  sun  and  did  not  last  above  one  hour. 
One  poor  little  hour — and  then  we  were  ashamed  that  we 
had  "  gushed  "  so.  The  poetry  was  all  in  the  anticipation — 
there  is  none  in  the  reality.  Imagine  a  vast,  waveless  ocean 
stricken  dead  and  turned  to  ashes ;  imagine  this  solemn  waste 
tufted  with  ash-dusted  sage-bushes;  imagine  the  lifeless  silence 
and  solitude  that  belong  to  such  a  place ;  imagine  a  coach, 
creeping  like  a  bug  through  the  midst  of  this  shoreless  level, 
and  sending  up  tumbled  volumes  of  dust  as  if  it  were  a  bug 
that  went  by  steam ;  imagine  this  aching  monotony  of  toiling 
and  plowing  kept  up  hour  after  hour,  and  the  shore  still  as  far 
away  as  ever,  apparently ;  imagine  team,  driver,  coach  and 
passengers  so  deeply  coated  with  ashes  that  they  are  all  one 
colorless  color;  imagine  ash-drifts  roosting  above  moustaches 
and  eyebrows  like  snow  accumulations  on  boughs  and  bushes. 
This  is  the  reality  of  it. 

The  sun  beats  down  with  dead,  blistering,  relentless 
malignity ;  the  perspiration  is  welling  from  every  pore  in  man 
and  beast,  biit  scarcely  a  sign  of  it  finds  its  way  to  the  surface 
—it  is  absorbed  before  it  gets  there ;  there  is  not  the  faintest 
breath  of  air  stirring ;  there  is  not  a  merciful  shred  of  cloud 
in  all  the  brilliant  firmament;  there  is  not  a  living  creature 
visible  in  any  direction  whither  one  searches  the  blank  level 
that  stretches  its  monotonous  miles  on  every  hand ;  there  is 
not  a  sound — not  a  sigh — not  a  whisper — not  a  buzz,  or  a  whir 
of  wings,  or  distant  pipe  of  bird — not  even  a  sob  from  the 
lost  souls  that  doubtless  people  that  dead  air.  And  so  the 
occasional  sneezing  of  the  resting  mules,  and  the  champing  of 


14A  ROMANCE    DISPELLED. 

tlie  bits,  grate  harshly  on  the  grim  stillness,  not  dissipating 
the  spell  but  accenting  it  and  making  one  feel  more  lonesome 
and  forsaken  than  before. 

The  mules,  under  violent  swearing,  coaxing  and  whip- 
cracking,  would  make  at  stated  intervals  a  "  spurt,"  and  drag 
the  coach  a  hundred  or  may  be  two  hundred  yards,  stirring 
up  a  billowy  cloud  of  dust  that  rolled  back,  enveloping  the 
vehicle  to  the  wTheel-tops  or  higher,  and  making  it  seem  afloat 
in  a  fog.  Then  a  rest  followed,  with  the  usual  sneezing  and 
bit-champing.  Then  another  "  spurt "  of  a  hundred  yards  and 
another  rest  at  the  end  of  it.  All  day  long  we  kept  this  up, 
without  water  for  the  mules  and  without  ever  changing  the 
team.  At  least  we  kept  it  up  ten  hours,  which,  I  take  it,  is  a 
day,  and  a  pretty  honest  one,  in  an  alkali  desert.  It  was  from 
four  in  the  morning  till  two  in  the  afternoon.  And  it  wao  so 
hot !  and  so  close !  and  our  water  canteens  went  dry  in  the 
middle  of  the  day  and  we  got  so  thirsty !  It  was  so  stupid 
and  tiresome  and  dull !  and  the  tedious  hours  did  lag  and 
drag  and  limp  along  with  such  a  cruel  deliberation !  It  was 
so  trying  to  give  one's  watch  a  good  long  undisturbed  spell 
and  then  take  it  out  and  find  that  it  had  been  fooling  away 
the  time  and  not  trying  to  get  ahead  any !  The  alkali  dust 
cut  through  our  lips,  it  persecuted  our  eyes,  it  ate  through  the 
delicate  membranes  and  made  our  noses  bleed  and  kept  them 
bleeding — and  truly  and  seriously  the  romance  all  faded  far 
away  and  disappeared,  and  left  the  desert  trip  nothing  but  a 
harsh  reality — a  thirsty,  sweltering,  longing,  hateful  reality  ! 

Two  miles  and  a  quarter  an  hour  for  ten  hours — that  was 
what  we  accomplished.  It  was  hard  to  bring  the  comprehen 
sion  away  down  to  such  a  snail-pace  as  that,  when  we  pad  been 
used  to  making  eight  and  ten  miles  an  hour.  When  we 
reached  the  station  on  the  farther  verge  of  the  desert,  we  were 
glad,  for  the  first  time,  that  the  dictionary  was  along,  because 
we  never  could  have  found  language  to  tell  how  glad  we  were, 
in  any  sort  of  dictionary  but  an  unabridged  one  with  pictures 
in  it.  But  there  could  not  have  been  found  in  a  whole  library 


A    BEAUTIFUL    THING    DISPOSED    OF. 


14:5 


of  dictionaries  language  sufficient  to  tell  how  tired  those  mules 
were  after  their  twenty-three  mile  pull.  To  try  to  give  the 
reader  an  idea  of  how  thirsty  they  were,  would  be  to  "  gild 
refined  gold  or  paint  the  lily." 

Somehow,  now  that  it  is  there,  the  quotation  does  not 
seem  to  fit — but  no  matter,  let  it  stay,  anyhow.  I  think  it  is 
a  graceful  and  attractive  thing,  and  therefore  have  tried  time 
and  time  again  to  work  it  in  where  it  would  fit,  but  could  not 
succeed.  These  efforts  have  kept  my  mind  distracted  and  ill 
at  ease,  and  made  my  narrative  seem  broken  and  disjointed, 
in  places.  Under  these  circumstances  it  seems  to  me  best  to 
leave  it  in,  as  above,  since  this  will  aiford  at  least  a  temporary 
respite  from  the  wear  and  tear  of  trying  to  "  lead  up  "  to  thia 
really  apt  and  beautiful  quotation. 

10f 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

ON  the  morning  of  the  sixteenth  day  out  from  St.  Joseph 
we  arrived  at  the  entrance  of  Rocky  Canyon,  two  hun 
dred  and  fifty  miles  from  Salt  Lake.  It  was  along  in  tins 
wild  country  somewhere,  and  far  from  any  habitation  of  white 
men,  except  the  stage  stations,  that  we  came  across  the  wretch- 
edest  type  of  mankind  I  have  ever  seen,  up  to  this  writing.  I 
refer  to  the  Goshoot  Indians.  Prom  what  we  could  see  and 
all  we  could  learn,  they  are  very  considerably  inferior  to  even 
the  despised  Digger  Indians  of  California  ;  inferior  to  all  races 
of  savages  on  our  continent ;  inferior  to  even  the  Terra  del 
Fuegans ;  inferior  to  the  Hottentots,  and  actually  inferior  in 
some  respects  to  the  Kytches  of  Africa.  Indeed,  I  have  been 
obliged  to  look  the  bulky  volumes  of  Wood's  "  Uncivilized 
Races  of  Men  "  clear  through  in  order  to  find  a  savage  triba 
degraded  enough  to  take  rank  with  the  Goshoots.  I  find  but 
one  people  fairly  open  to  that  shameful  verdict.  It  is  the  Bos- 
jesmans  (Bushmen)  of  South  Africa.  Such  of  the  Goshoots 
as  we  saw,  along  the  road  and  hanging  about  the  stations, 
were  small,  lean,  u  scrawny "  creatures ;  in  complexion  a  dull 
black  like  the  ordinary  American  negro ;  their  faces  and  hands 
bearing  dirt  which  they  had  been  hoarding  and  accumulating 
for  months,  years,  and  even  generations,  according  to  the  ago 
of  the  proprietor ;  a  silent,  sneaking,  treacherous  looking  race ; 
taking  note  of  everything,  covertly,  like  all  the  other  "  Noble 
Red  Men  "  that  we  (do  not)  read  about,  and  betraying  no  sign  in 
their  countenances ;  indolent,  everlastingly  patient  and  tireless, 
like  all  other  Indians ;  prideless  beggars — for  if  the  beggar  in- 


CHARACTERISTICS    OF    THE    GOSIIOOTS. 


147 


stiiict  were  left  out  of  an  Indian  he  would  not  "  go,"  any  moro 
than  a  clock  without  a  pendulum ;  hungry,  always  hungry, 
and  yet  never  refusing  anything  that  a  hog  would  eat,  though 
often  eating  what  a  hog  wrould  decline ;  hunters,  but  having 

no  higher 
ambition 
than  to  kill 
and  eat  jack 
ass  rabbits, 


GOSHOOT    INDIANS    HANGING    AROUND    STATIONS. 

crickets  and  grasshoppers,  and  embezzle  carrion  from  the  buz 
zards  and  cayotes ;  savages  who,  when  asked  if  they  have  the 
common  Indian  belief  in  a  Great  Spirit  show  a  something 
which  almost  amounts  to  emotion,  thinking  whiskey  is  referred 
to ;  a  thin,  scattering  race  of  almost  naked  black  children,  these 
( roshoots  are,  who  produce  nothing  at  all,  and  have  no  villages, 
and  no  gatherings  together  into  strictly  denned  tribal  com 
munities — a  people  wrhose  only  shelter  is  a  rag  cast  on  a  bush 
to  keep  oif  a  portion  of  the  snow,  and  yet  who  inhabit  one  of 
the  most  rocky,  wintry,  repulsive  wastes  that  our  country  or 
any  other  can  exhibit. 

The  Bushmen  and  our  Goshoots  are  manifestly  descended 
from  the  self- same  gorilla,  or  kangaroo,  or  Norway  rat,  which 
ever  animal-Adam  the  Darwinians  trace  them  to. 

One  would  as  soon  expect  the  rabbits  to  fight  as  the 


148       A    BRAVE    DRIVER    AND    TERRIFIED    JUDGE. 

Goshoots,  and  yet  they  used  to  live  off  the  offal  and  refuse 
of  the  stations  a  few  months  and  then  come  some  dark 
night  when  no  mischief  was  expected,  and  burn  down  the 
buildings  and  kill  the  men  from  ambusli  as  they  rushed 
out.  And  once,  in  the  night,  they  attacked  the  stage-coach 
when  a  District  Judge,  of  Nevada  Territory,  was  the  only 
passenger,  and  with  their  first  volley  of  arrows  (and  a  bullet 
or  two)  they  riddled  the  stage  curtains,  wounded  a  horse  or 
two  and  mortally  wounded  the  driver.  The  latter  was  full 
of  pluck,  and  so  was  his  passenger.  At  the  driver's  call 
Judge  Mott  swung  himself  out,  clambered  to  the  box  and 
seized  the  reins  of  the  team,  and  away  they  plunged,  through 
the  racing  mob  of  skeletons  and  under  a  hurtling  storm  of 
missiles.  The  stricken  driver  had  sunk  down  on  the  boot  as 
soon  as  he  was  wounded,  but  had  held  on  to  the  reins  and 
said  he  would  manage  to  keep  hold  of  them  until  relieved. 

And  after  they 
were  taken  from 
his  relaxing 
grasp,  he  lay  with 
his  head  between 
Judge  Mott'a 
feet,  and  tran 
quilly  gave  direc 
tions  about  the 
road ;  he  said  he 
believed  he  could 
live  till  the  mis 
creants  were  out 
run  and  left  be 
hind,  and  that  if 
he  managed  that, 

DBIYB    TOR  LI**.  ^  ^^  difficnlty 

would  be  at  an  end,  and  then  if  the  Judge  drove  so  and  so 
(giving  directions  about  bad  places  in  the  road,  and  general 
course)  he  would  reach  the  next  station  without  trouble.  The 
Judge  distanced  the  enemy  and  at  last  rattled  up  to  the 
station  and  knew  that  the  night's  perils  were  done;  but 


THE    RED    MEN    SLANDERED.  149 

there  was  no  comrade-in-arms  for  him  to  rejoice  with,  for  the 
soldierly  driver  was  dead. 

Let  us  forget  that  we  have  been  saying  harsh  things  about 
the  Overland  drivers,  now.  The  disgust  which  the  Goshoots 
gave  me,  a  disciple  of  Cooper  and  a  worshipper  of  the  Red 
Man — even  of  the  scholarly  savages  in  the  "  Last  of  the  Mo 
hicans"  who  are  fittingly  associated  with  backwoodsmen 
who  divide  each  sentence  into  two  equal  parts :  one  part  crit 
ically  grammatical,  refined  and  choice  of  language,  and  the 
other  part  just  such  an  attempt  to  talk  like  a  hunter  or  a 
mountaineer,  as  a  Broadway  clerk  might  make  after  eating  an 
edition  of  Emerson  Bennett's  works  and  studying  frontier 
life  at  the  Bowery  Theatre  a  couple  of  weeks — I  say  that  the 
nausea  which  the  Goshoots  gave  me,  an  Indian  worshipper, 
set  me  to  examining  authorities,  to  see  if  perchance  I  had  been 
over-estimating  the  Red  Man  while  viewing  him  through  the 
mellow  moonshine  of  romance.  The  revelations  that  came 
were  disenchanting.  It  was  curious  to  see  how  quickly  the 
paint  and  tinsel  fell  away  from  him  and  left  him  treacherous, 
filthy  and  repulsive — and  how  quickly  the  evidences  accumu 
lated  that  wherever  one  finds  an  Indian  tribe  he  has  only 
found  Goshoots  more  or  less  modified  by  circumstances  and 
surroundings — bat  Goshoots,  after  all.  They  Jeserve  pity, 
poor  creatures;  and  they  can  have  mine — at  this  distance. 
Nearer  by,  they  never  get  anybody's. 

There  is  an  impression  abroad  that  the  Baltimore  and 
Washington  Railroad  Company  and  many  of  its  employes  are 
Goshoots ;  but  it  is  an  error.  There  is  only  a  plausible  resem 
blance,  which,  while  it  is  apt  enough  to  mislead  the  ignorant, 
cannot  deceive  parties  who  have  contemplated  both  tribes. 
But  seriously,  it  was  not  only  poor  wit,  but  very  wrong  to 
start  the  report  referred  to  above ;  for  however  innocent  the 
motive  may  have  been,  the  necessary  effect  was  to  injure  the 
reputation  of  a  class  who  have  a  hard  enough  time  of  it  in  the 
pitiless  deserts  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  Heaven  knows !  If 
we  cannot  find  it  in  our  hearts  to  give  those  poor  naked  crea 
tures  our  Christian  sympathy  and  compassion,  in  God's  name 
let  us  at  least  not  throw  mud  at  them. 


CHAPTER    XX. 

ON  the  seventeenth  day  we  passed  the  highest  mountain 
peaks  we  had  yet  seen,  and  although  the  day  was  very 
warm  the  night  that  followed  upon  its  heels  was  wintry  cold 
and  blankets  were  next  to  useless. 

On  the  eighteenth  day  we  encountered  the  eastward-bound 
telegraph-constructors  at  Reese  River  station  and  sent  a  mes 
sage  to  his  Excellency  Gov.  Nye  at  Carson  City  (distant  one 
hundred  and  fifty-six  miles). 

On  the  nineteenth  day  we  crossed  the  Great  American 
Desert — forty  memorable  miles  of  bottomless  sand,  into  which 
the  coach  wheels  sunk  from  six  inches  to  a  foot.  We  worked 
our  passage  most  of  the  way  across.  That  is  to  say,  we  got 
out  and  walked.  It  was  a  dreary  pull  and  a  long  and  thirsty 
one,  for  we  had  no  water.  From  one  extremity  of  this  desert 
to  the  other,  the  road  was  white  with  the  bones  of  oxen  and 
horses.  It  would  hardly  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  we 
could  have  walked  the  forty  miles  and  set  our  feet  on  a  bone 
at  every  step !  The  desert  was  one  prodigious  graveyard. 
And  the  log-chains,  wagon  tyres,  and  rotting  wrecks  of  vehi 
cles  were  almost  as  thick  as  the  bones.  I  think  we  saw  log- 
chains  enough  rusting  there  in  the  desert,  to  reach  across  any 
State  in  the  Union.  Do  not  these  relics  suggest  something  of 
an  idea  of  the  fearful  suffering  and  privation  the  early  emi 
grants  to  California  endured  ? 

At  the  border  of  the  Desert  lies  Carson  Lake,  or  The 
"  Sink"  of  the  Carson,  a  shallow,  melancholy  sheet  of  water 


A    BALD-HEADED    ANECDOTE. 


151 


some  eighty  or  a  hundred  miles  in  circumference.  Carson 
River  empties  into  it  and  is  lost — sinks  mysteriously  into  the 
earth  and  never  appears  in  the  light  of  the  sun  again — for  the 
lake  has  no  outlet  whatever. 

There  are  several  rivers  in  Nevada,  and  they  all  have  this 
mysterious  late.  They  end  in  various  lakes  or  "  sinks,"  and 
that  is  the  last  of  them.  Carson  Lake,  Humboldt  Lake, 
Walker  Lake,  Mono  Lake,  are  all  great  sheets  of  water  with 
out  any  visible  outlet.  Water  is  always  flowing  into  them ; 
none  is  ever  seen 
to  flow  out  of  them, 
and  yet  they  re 
main  always  level 
full,  neither  reced 
ing  nor  overflowing. 
What  they  do  with 
their  surplus  is 
only  known  to  the 
Creator. 

On  the  western 
verge  of  the  Desert 
we  halted  a  moment 
at  Ragtown.  It  con 
sisted  of  one  loir- 

o 

house  and  is  not  set 
down  on  the  map. 

This  reminds  me  GREELEY'B  RIDE. 

of  a  circumstance.  Just  after  we  left  Julesburg,  on  the  Platte, 
I  was  sitting  with  the  driver,  and  he  said : 

"  I  can  tell  you  a  most  laughable  thing  indeed,  if  you 
would  like  to  listen  to  it.  Horace  Greeley  went  over  this  road 
once.  When  he  was  leaving  Carson  City  he  told  the  driver, 
Hank  Monk,  that  he  had  an  engagement  to  lecture  at  Placer- 
vine  and  was  very  anxious  to  go  through  quick.  Hank  Monk 
cracked  his  whip  and  started  off  at  an  awful  pace.  The  coach 
bounced  up  and  down  in  such  a  terrific  way  that  it  jolted  the 
buttons  all  off  of  Horace's  coat,  and  finally  shot  his  head  clean 


152  THE  ANECDOTE  REPEATED. 

through  the  roof  of  the  stage,  and  then  he  yelled  at  Hank 
Monk  and  begged  him  to  go  easier — said  he  warn't  in  as  much 
of  a  hurry  as  he  was  awhile  ago.  But  Hank  Monk  said, 
'  Keep  your  seat,  Horace,  and  I'll  get  you  there  on  time ' — 
and  you  bet  you  he  did,  too,  what  was  left  of  him !  " 

A  day  or  two  after  that  we  picked  up  a  Denver  man  at 
the  cross  roads,  and  he  told  us  a  good  deal  about  the  country 
and  the  Gregory  Diggings.  He  seemed  a  very  entertaining 
person  and  a  man  well  posted  in  the  affairs  of  Colorado.  By 
and  by  he  remarked  : 

"  I  can  tell  you  a  most  laughable  thing  indeed,  if  you  would 
like  to  listen  to  it.  Horace  Greeley  went  over  this  road  once. 
When  he  was  leaving  Carson  City  he  told  the  driver,  Hank 
Monk,  that  he  had  an  engagement  to  lecture  at  Placerville 
and  was  very  anxious  to  go  through  quick.  Hank  Monk 
cracked  his  whip  and  started  off  at  an  awful  pace.  The  coach 
bounced  up  and  down  in  such  a  terrific  way  that  it  jolted  the 
buttons  all  off  of  Horace's  coat,  and  finally  shot  his  head  clean 
through  the  roof  of  the  stage,  and  then  he  yelled  at  Hank 
Monk  and  begged  him  to  go  easier — said  he  warn't  in  as  much 
of  a  hurry  as  he  was  awhile  ago.  But  Hank  Monk  said, 
'  Keep  your  seat,  Horace,  and  I'll  get  you  there  on  time  ! ' — 
and  you  bet  you  he  did,  too,  what  was  left  of  him  !  " 

At  Fort  Bridger,  some  days  after  this,  we  took  on  board  a 
cavalry  sergeant,  a  very  proper  and  soldierly  person  indeed. 
From  no  other  man  during  the  whole  journey,  did  we  gather 
such  a  store  of  concise  and  well-arranged  military  information. 
It  was  surprising  to  find  in  the  desolate  wilds  of  our  country 
a  man  so  thoroughly  acquainted  with  everything  useful  to 
know  in  his  line  of  life,  and  yet  of  such  inferior  rank  and  un 
pretentious  bearing.  For  as  much  as  three  hours  we  listened 
to  him  with  unabated  interest.  Finally  he  got  upon  the  sub 
ject  of  trans-continental  travel,  and  presently  said  : 

"  I  can  tell  you  a  very  laughable  thing  indeed,  if  you  would 
like  to  listen  to  it.  Horace  Greeley  went  over  this  road  once. 
"When  he  was  leaving  Carson  City  he  told  the  driver,  Hank 
Monk,  that  he  had  an  engagement  to  lecture  at  Placerville  and 


AN    INTERESTING    REPETITION.  153 

was  very  anxious  to  go  through  quick.  Hank  Monk  cracked 
his  whip  and  started  off  at  an  awful  pace.  The  coach  bounced 
up  and  down  in  such  a  terrific  way  that  it  jolted  the  buttons 
all  off  of  Horace's  coat,  and  finally  shot  his  head  clean  through 
the  roof  of  the  stage,  and  then  he  yelled  at  Hank  Monk  and 
begged  him  to  go  easier — said  he  warn't  in  as  much  of  a  hurry 
as  he  was  awhile  ago.  But  Hank  Monk  said,  '  Keep  your 
seat,  Horace,  and  I'll  get  you  there  on  time  ! ' — and  you  bet  you 
he  did,  too,  what  was  left  of  him !  " 

When  we  were  eight  hours  out  from  Salt  Lake  City  a 
Mormon  preacher  got  in  with  us  at  a  way  station — a  gentle, 
soft-spoken,  kindly  man,  and  one  whom  any  stranger  would 
warm  to  at  first  sight.  I  can  never  forget  the  pathos  that  was 
in  his  voice  as  he  told,  in  simple  language,  the  story  of  his 
people's  wanderings  and  unpitied  sufferings.  No  pulpit  elo 
quence  was  ever  so  moving  and  so  beautiful  as  this  outcast's 
picture  of  the  first  Mormon  pilgrimage  across  the  plains, 
struggling  sorrowfully  onward  to  the  land  of  its  banishment 
and  marking  its  desolate  way  with  graves  and  watering  it  with 
tears.  His  words  so  wrought  upon  us  that  it  was  a  relief  to 
us  all  when  the  conversation  drifted  into  a  more  cheerful  chan 
nel  and  the  natural  features  of  the  curious  country  we  were  in 
came  under  treatment.  One  matter  after  another  was  pleas 
antly  discussed,  and  at  length  the  stranger  said : 

"  I  can  tell  you  a  most  laughable  thing  indeed,  if  you  would 
like  to  listen  to  it.  Horace  Greeley  went  over  this  road  once. 
When  he  was  leaving  Carson  City  he  told  the  driver,  Hank 
Monk,  that  he  had  an  engagement  to  lecture  in  Placerville, 
and  was  very  anxious  to  go  through  quick.  Hank  Monk 
cracked  his  whip  and  started  off  at  an  awful  pace.  The  coach 
bounced  up  and  down  in  such  a  terrific  way  that  it  jolted  the 
buttons  all  off  of  Horace's  coat,  and  finally  shot  his  head  clean 
through  the  roof  of  the  stage,  and  then  he  yelled  at  Hank 
Monk  and  begged  him  to  go  easier — said  he  warn't  in  as  much 
of  a  hurry  as  he  was  awhile  ago.  But  Hank  Monk  said, 
'  Keep  your  seat,  Horace,  and  I'll  get  you  there  on  time ! '—» 
and  you  bet  you  he  did,  too,  what  was  left  of  him ! " 


154: 


A    GRATEFUL    STRANGER. 


Ten  miles  out  of  Ragtown  we  found  a  poor  wanderer  who 
had  lain  down  to  die.  He  had  walked  as  long  as  he  could, 
but  his  limbs  had  failed  him  at  last.  Hunger  and  fatigue 
had  conquered  him.  It  would  have  been  inhuman  to  leave 
him  there.  "We  paid  his  fare  to  Carson  and  lifted  him 
into  the  coach.  It  was  some  little  time  before  he  showed  any 
very  decided  signs  of  life;  but  by  dint  of  chafing  him  and 
pouring  brandy  between  his  lips  we  finally  brought  him  to  a 
languid  consciousness.  Then  we  fed  him  a  little,  and  by  and 
by  he  seemed  to  comprehend  the  situation  and  a  grateful 
light  softened  his  eye.  We  made  his  mail-sack  bed  as  com 
fortable  as  possible,  and  constructed  a  pillow  for  him  with  our 
coats.  He  seemed  very  thankful.  Then  he  looked  up  in  our 
faces,  and  said  in  a  feeble  voice  that  had  a  tremble  of  honest 
emotion  in  it : 

"  Gentlemen,  I  know  not  who  you  are,  but  you  have  saved 
my  life ;  and  although  I  can  never  be  able  to  repay  you  for  it,  I 

feel  that  I  can 
at  least  make 
one  hour  of  your 
long  journey 
lighter.  I  take 
it  you  are  strang 
ers  to  this  great 
thoroughfare, 
but  I  am  entire 
ly  familiar  with 
it.  In  this  con 
nection  I  can 
tell  you  a  most 
laughable  thing 
indeed,  if  you 
Horace  Greeley — " 


BOTTLING  AN  ANECDOTE. 


would  like  to  listen  to  it. 

I  said,  impressively : 

"  Suffering  stranger,  proceed  at  your  peril.  You  see  in  me 
the  melancholy  wreck  of  a  once  stalwart  and  magnificent  man 
hood.  What  has  brought  me  to  this  ?  That  thing  which  you 


A  FAMOUS  AND  IMMORTAL  ADVENTURE.    155 

are  about  to  tell.  Gradually  but  surely,  that  tiresome  old 
anecdote  has  sapped  my  strength,  undermined  my  constitu 
tion,  withered  my  life.  Pity  my  helplessness.  Spare  me 
only  just  this  once,  and  tell  me  about  young  George  Wash 
ington  and  his  little  hatchet  for  a  change." 

We  were  saved.  But  not  so  the  invalid.  In  trying  to 
retain  the  anecdote  in  his  system  he  strained  himself  and 
died  in  our  arms. 

I  am  aware,  now,  that  I  ought  not  to  have  asked  of  the 
sturdiest  citizen  of  all  that  region,  what  I  asked  of  that  mere 
shadow  of  a  man ;  for,  after  seven  years'  residence  on  the  Pa 
cific  coast,  I  know  that  no  passenger  or  driver  on  the  Overland 
ever  corked  that  anecdote  in,  when  a  stranger  was  by,  and  sur 
vived.  Within  a  period  of  six  years  I  crossed  and  recrossed  the 
Sierras  between  Nevada  and  California  thirteen  times  by  stage 
and  listened  to  that  deathless  incident  four  hundred  and  eighty- 
one  or  eighty-two  times.  I  have  the  list  somewhere.  Drivers 
always  told  it,  conductors  told  it,  landlords  told  it,  chance 
passengers  told  it,  the  very  Chinamen  and  vagrant  Indians 
recounted  it.  I  have  had  the  same  driver  tell  it  to  me  two 
or  three  times  in  the  same  afternoon.  It  has  come  to  me  in 
all  the  multitude  of  tongues  that  Babel  bequeathed  to  earth, 
and  flavored  with  whiskey,  brandy,  beer,  cologne,  sozodont, 
tobacco,  garlic,  onions,  grasshoppers — everything  that  has  a  fra 
grance  to  it  through  all  the  long  list  of  things  that  are  gorged 
or  guzzled  by  the  sons  of  men.  I  never  have  smelt  any  anec 
dote  as  often  as  I  have  smelt  that  one ;  never  have  smelt  any 
anecdote  that  smelt  so  variegated  as  that  one.  And  you  never 
could  learn  to  know  it  by  its  smell,  because  every  time  you 
thought  you  had  learned  the  smell  of  it,  it  would  turn  up  with 
a  different  smell.  Bayard  Taylor  has  written  about  this  hoary 
anecdote,  Richardson  has  published  it ;  so  have  Jones,  Smith, 
Johnson,  Ross  Browne,  and  every  other  correspondence-indit 
ing  being  that  ever  set  his  foot  upon  the  great  overland  road 
anywhere  between  Julesburg  and  San  Francisco ;  and  I  have 
heard  that  it  is  in  the  Talmud.  I  have  seen  it  in  print  in 
nine  different  foreign  languages ;  I  have  been  told  that  it  is 


156  ALAS!    AN    INFAMOUS    FALSEHOOD. 

employed  in  the  inquisition  in  Rome ;  and  I  now  learn  with 
regret  that  it  is  going  to  be  set  to  music.  I  do  not  think  that 
such  things  are  right. 

Stage-coaching  on  the  Overland  is  no  more,  and  stage 
drivers  are  a  race  defunct.  I  wonder  if  they  bequeathed  that 
bald-headed  anecdote  to  their  successors,  the  railroad  brake- 
men  and  conductors,  and  if  these  latter  still  persecute  the 
helpless  passenger  with  it  until  he  concludes,  as  did  many  a 
tourist  of  other  days,  that  the  real  grandeurs  of  the  Pacific  coast 
are  not  Yo  Semite  and  the  Big  Trees,  but  Hank  Monk  and 
his  adventure  with  Horace  Greeley.* 

*And  what  makes  that  worn  anecdote  the  more  aggravating,  is,  that 
the  adventure  it  celebrates  never  occurred.  If  it  were  a  good  anecdote, 
that  seeming  demerit  would  be  its  chiefest  virtue,  for  creative  power  be 
longs  to  greatness  ;  but  what  ought  to  be  done  to  a  man  who  would  wantonly 
contrive  so  flat  a  one  as  this?  If  /were  to  suggest  what  ought  to  be  done 
to  him,  I  should  be  called  extravagant — but  what  does  the  sixteenth  chap- 
ter  of  Daniel  say  ?  Aha  1 


CHAPTEE    XXI. 

"TTT"E  were  approaching  the  end  of  our  long  journey.  It 
VV  Was  the  morning  of  the  twentieth  day.  At  noon  we 
would  reach  Carson  City,  the  capital  of  Nevada  Territory. 
"We  were  not  glad,  but  sorry.  It  had  been  a  fine  pleasure 
trip ;  we  had  fed  fat  on  wonders  every  day ;  we  were  now 
well  accustomed  to  stage  life,  and  very  fond  of  it ;  so  the  idea 
of  coming  to  a  stand-still  and  settling  down  to  a  humdrum 
existence  in  a  village  was  not  agreeable,  but  on  the  contrary 
depressing. 

Visibly  our  new  home  was  a  desert,  walled  in  by  barren, 
snow-clad  mountains.  There  was  not  a  tree  in  sight.  There 
was  no  vegetation  but  the  endless  sage-brush  and  greasewood. 
All  nature  was  gray  with  it.  We  were  plowing  through 
great  deeps  of  powdery  alkali  dust  that  rose  in  thick  clouds 
and  floated  across  the  plain  like  smoke  from  a  burning  house. 
We  were  coated  with  it  like  millers ;  go  were  the  coach,  the 
mules,  the  mail-bags,  the  driver — we  and  the  sage-brush  and 
the  other  scenery  were  all  one  monotonous  color.  Long  trains 
of  freight  wagons  in  the  distance  enveloped  in  ascending 
masses  of  dust  suggested  pictures  of  prairies  on  fire.  These 
teams  and  their  masters  were  the  only  life  we  saw.  Other 
wise  we  moved  in  the  midst  of  solitude,  silence  and  desolation. 
Every  twenty  steps  we  passed  the  skeleton  of  some  dead 
beast  of  burthen,  with  its  dust-coated  skin  stretched  tightly 
over  its  empty  ribs.  Frequently  a  solemn  raven  sat  upon  the 


t58  ARRIVED    AT    CARSON    CITY. 

ekull  or  the  hips  and  contemplated  the  passing  coach  with 
meditative  serenity. 

By  and  by  Carson  City  was  pointed  out  to  us.  It  nestled 
in  the  edge  of  a  great  plain  and  was  a  sufficient  number  of 

miles  away  to  look  like  an  assemblage 
of  mere  white  spots  in  the  shadow  of 
a  grim  range  of  mountains  overlook 
ing  it,  whose  summits  seemed  lifted 
clear  out  of  companionship  and  con 
sciousness  of  earthly  things. 

We  arrived,  disembarked,  and  the 
stage  went  on.     It  was  a  ki  wooden  " 
town ;  its  population   two   thousand 
'CONTEMPLATION.  souls.     The  main  street  consisted  of 

four  or  five  blocks  of  little  white  frame  stores  which  were  too 
high  to  sit  down  on,  but  not  too  high  for  various  other  purposes ; 
in  fact,  hardly  high  enough.  They  were  packed  close  together, 
side  by  side,  as  if  room  were  scarce  in  that  mighty  plain.  The 
sidewalk  was  of  boards  that  were  more  or  less  loose  and 
inclined  to  rattle  when  walked  upon.  In  the  middle  of  the 
town,  opposite  the  stores,  was  the  "  plaza  "  which  is  native  to 
all  towns  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains — a  large,  unfenced, 
level  vacancy,  with  a  liberty  pole  in  it,  and  very  useful  as  a 
place  for  public  auctions,  horse  trades,  and  mass  meetings,  and 
likewise  for  teamsters  to  camp  in.  Two  other  sides  of  the 
plaza  were  faced  by  stores,  offices  and  stables.  The  rest  of 
Carson  City  was  pretty  scattering. 

"We  were  introduced  to  several  citizens,  at  the  stage-office 
and  on  the  way  up  to  the  Governor's  from  the  hotel — among 
others,  to  a  Mr.  Harris,  who  was  on  horseback ;  he  began  to 
say  something,  but  interrupted  himself  with  the  remark : 

"I'll  have  to  get  you  to  excuse  me  a  minute  ;  yonder  is  the 
witness  that  swore  I  helped  to  rob  the  California  coach — a 
piece  of  impertinent  intermeddling,  sir,  for  I  am  not  even 
acquainted  with  the  man." 

Then  he  rode  over  and  began  to  rebuke  the  stranger  with 
a  six-shooter,  and  the  stranger  began  to  explain  with  another. 


FIRST    DAT    OF    SIGHT-SEEING. 


153 


When  the  pistols  were  emptied,  the  stranger  resumed  his  work 
(mending  a  whip-lash),  and  Mr.  Harris  rode  by  with^a  polite 
nod,  homeward  bound,  with  a  bullet  through  one  of  his  lungs, 
and  several  in  his  hips ;  and  from  them  issued  little  rivulets 
of  blood  that  coursed  down  the  horse's  sides  and  made  the 
animal  look  quite  picturesque.  I  never  saw  Harris  shoot  a 
man  after  that  but  it  recalled  to  mind  that  first  day  in  Carson. 
This  was  all  we  saw  that  day,  for  it  was  two  o'clock,  now, 
and  according  to  custom  the  daily  " "Washoe  Zephyr"  set  in; 
a  soaring  dust-drift  about  the  size  of  the  United  States  set  up 
edgewise  came  with  it,  and  the  capital  of  Xevada  Territory 


THE   WASHOE   ZEPHYR. 


disappeared  from  view.  Still,  there  were  sights  to  be  seen 
which  were  not  wholly  uninteresting  to  new  comers;  for  the 
vast  dust  cloud  was  thickly  freckled  with  things  strange  to  the 
upper  air — things  living  and  dead,  that  flitted  hither  and 
thither,  going  and  coming,  appearing  and  disappearing  among 


160  A    WASHOE    ZEPHYR    AT    PLAY. 

the  rolling  billows  of  dust — hats,  chickens  and  parasols  sailing 
in  the  remote  heavens;  blankets,  tin  signs,  sage-brush  and 
shingles  a  shade  lower;  door-mats  and  buffalo  robes  lower 
still ;  shovels  and  coal  scuttles  on  the  next  grade ;  glass  doors, 
cats  and  little  children  on  the  next;  disrupted  lumber  yards, 
light  buggies  and  wheelbarrows  on  the  next ;  and  down  only 
thirty  or  forty  feet  above  ground  was  a  scurrying  storm  of 
emigrating  roofs  and  vacant  lots. 

It  was  something  to  see  that  much.  I  could  have  seen 
more,  if  I  could  have  kept  the  dust  out  of  my  eyes. 

But  seriously  a  Washoe  wind  is  by  no  means  a  trifling 
matter.  It  blows  flimsy  houses  down,  lifts  shingle  roofs  oc 
casionally,  rolls  up  tin  ones  like  sheet  music,  now  and  then 
blows  a  stage  coach  over  and  spills  the  passengers ;  and  tra 
dition  says  the  reason  there  are  so  many  bald  people  there,  is, 
that  the  wind  blows  the  hair  off  their  heads  while  they  are 
looking  skyward  after  their  hats.  Carson  streets  seldom  look 
inactive  on  Summer  afternoons,  because  there  are  so  many 
citizens  skipping  around  their  escaping  hats,  like  chamber 
maids  trying  to  head  off  a  spider. 

The  "Washoe  Zephyr"  (Washoe  is  a  pet  nickname  for 
Nevada)  is  a  peculiarly  Scriptural  wind,  in  that  no  man 
knoweth  "  whence  it  corneth."  That  is  to  say,  where  it  origi 
nates.  It  comes  right  over  the  mountains  from  the  West,  but 
when  one  crosses  the  ridge  he  does  not  find  any  of  it  on  the 
other  side !  It  probably  is  manufactured  on  the  mountain-top 
for  the  occasion,  and  starts  from  there.  It  is  a  pretty  regular 
wind,  in  the  summer  time.  Its  office  hours  are  from  two  in 
the  afternoon  till  two  the  next  morning ;  and  anybody  ventur 
ing  abroad  during  those  twelve  hours  needs  to  allow  for  the 
wind  or  he  will  bring  up  a  mile  or  two  to  leeward  of  the 
point  he  is  aiming  at.  And  yet  the  first  complaint  a  Washoe 
visitor  to  San  Francisco  makes,  is  that  the  sea  winds  blow  so, 
there !  There  is  a  good  deal  of  human  nature  in  that. 

We  found  the  state  palace  of  the  Governor  of  Nevada 
Territory  to  consist  of  a  white  frame  one-story  house  with  two 
small  rooms  in  it  and  a  stanchion  supported  shed  in  front — for 


OFFICIAL    HEAD-QUARTERS. 


161 


grandeur — it  compelled  the  respect  of  the  citizen  and  inspired 
the  Indians  with  awe.  The  newly  arrived  Chief  and  Associate 
Justices  of  the  Territory,  and  other  machinery  of  the  govern 
ment,  were  domiciled  with  less  splendor.  They  were  boarding 
around  privately,  and  had  their  offices  in  their  bedrooms. 

The  Secretary  and  I  took  quarters  in  the  "  ranch  "  of  a 
worthy  French  lady  by  the  name  of  Bridget  O'Flannigan,  a 
camp  follower  of  his  Excellency  the  Governor.  She  had 
known  him  in  his  prosperity  as  commander-in-chief  of  the 
Metropolitan  Police  of  New  York,  and  she  would  not  desert 


THE  GOVERNOR'S  HOUSE. 

him  in  his  adversity  as  Governor  of  Nevada.  Our  room  was 
on  the  lower  floor,  facing  the  plaza,  and  when  we  had  got  our 
bed,  a  small  table,  two  chairs,  the  government  fire-proof  safe, 
and  the  Unabridged  Dictionary  into  it,  there  w^as  still  room 
enough  left  for  a  visitor — may  be  two,  but  not  without  strain 
ing  the  walls.  But  the  walls  could  stand  it — at  least  the  pa-r- 
titions  could,  for  they  consisted  simply  of  one  thickness  of 
white  "  cotton  domestic  "  stretched  from  corner  to  corner  of 
the  room.  This  was  the  rule  in  Carson — any  other  kind  of 
partition  was  the  rare  exception.  And  if  you  stood  in  a  dark 


LTJXUKIOU8    ACCOMMODATIONS. 


DARK  DISCLOSURES. 


room  and  your  neighbors  in  the  next  had  lights,  the  shadows 
on  your  canvas  told   queer   secrets  sometimes !     Very  often 

these  partitions 
were  made  of  old 
flour  sacks  basted 
together ;  and  then 
the  difference  be 
tween  the  common 
herd  and  the  aris 
tocracy  was,  that  the 
common  herd  had 
unornamented 
sacks,  while  the 
walls  of  the  aris 
tocrat  were  over 
powering  with  ru- 
dimental  fresco — 
i.  e.,  red  and  blue 
mill  brands  on  the 
flour  sacks.  Occasionally,  also,  the  better  classes  embellished 
their  canvas  by  pasting  pictures  from  Harper's  Weekly  on  them. 
In  many  cases,  too,  the  wealthy  and  the  cultured  rose  to  spit 
toons  and  other  evidences  of  a  sumptuous  and  luxurious  taste.* 
We  had  a  carpet  and  a  genuine  queen' s-ware  washbowl.  Con 
sequently  we  were  hated  without  reserve  by  the  other  tenants 
of  the  O'Flannigan  "  ranch."  When  we  added  a  painted  oil 
cloth  window  curtain,  we  simply  took  our  lives  into  our  own 
hands.  To  prevent  bloodshed  I  removed  up  stairs  and  took 
up  quarters  with  the  un titled  plebeians  in  one  of  the  fourteen 
white  pine  cot-bedsteads  that  stood  in  two  long  ranks  in  the 
one  sole  room  of  which  the  second  story  consisted. 

It  was  a  jolly  company,  the  fourteen.  They  were  princi 
pally  voluntary  camp-followers  of  the  Governor,  who  had 
joined  his  retinue  by  their  own  election  at  New  York  and 

*  Waslioe  people  take  a  joke  so  hard  that  I  must  explain  that  the  above 
description  was  only  the  rule  ;  there  were  many  honorable  exceptions  in 
Carson — plastered  ceilings  and  houses  that  had  considerable  furniture  in 
them.— M.  T. 


MRS.    CTFLANNIGAN'S    BOARDERS. 


163 


San  Francisco  and  came  along,  feeling  that  in  the  scuffle  for 
little  territorial  crumbs  and  offices  they  could  not  make  their 
condition  more  precarious  than  it  was,  and  might  reasonably 
expect  to  make  it  better.  They  were  popularly  known  as  the 
"  Irish  Brigade,"  though  there  were  only  four  or  five  Irish 
men  among  all  the  Governor's  retainers.  His  good-natured 


THE    1KISH    BRIGADE. 


Excellency  was  much  annoyed  at  the  gossip  his  henchmen 
created — especially  when  there  arose  a  rumor  that  they  were 
paid  assassins  of  his,  brought  along  to  quietly  reduce  the 
democratic  vote  when  desirable ! 

Mrs.  O'Flannigan  was  boarding  and  lodging  them  at  ten 
dollars  a  week  apiece,  and  they  were  cheerfully  giving  their 
notes  for  it.  They  were  perfectly  satisfied,  but  Bridget  pres 
ently  found  that  notes  that  could  riot  be  discounted  were  but 
a  feeble  constitution  for  a  Carson  boarding-house.  So  she 
began  to  harry  the  Governor  to  find  employment  for  the 
"  Brigade."  Her  importunities  and  theirs  together  drove  him 
to  a  gentle  desperation  at  last,  and  he  finally  summoned  the 
Brigade  to  the  presence.  Then,  said  he : 


EMPLOYMENT    FOR    THE    BRIGADE. 

"  Gentlemen,  I  have  planned  a  lucrative  and  useful  service 
for  you — a  service  which  will  provide  you  with  recreation  amid 
noble  landscapes,  and  afford  you  never  ceasing  opportunities 
for  enriching  your  minds  by  observation  and  study.  I  want 
you  to  survey  a  railroad  from  Carson  City  westward  to  a  cer 
tain  point !  When  the  legislature  meets  I  will  have  the  neces 
sary  bill  passed  and  the  remuneration  arranged." 

"  What,  a  railroad  over  the  Sierra  Nevada  Mountains  ? " 
"  Well,  then,  survey  it  eastward  to  a  certain  point !  " 
He  converted  them  into  surveyors,  chain-bearers  and  so 
on,  and  turned  them  loose  in  the  desert.     It  was  "  recreation  " 
with  a  vengeance !     Recreation  on  foot,  lugging  chains  through 
sand  and  sage-brush,  under  a  sultry  sun  and  among  cattle  bones, 
cayotes  and   tarantulas.      "Romantic 
adventure  "  could  go  no  further.  They 
surveyed  very  slowly,very  deliberately, 
very  carefully.     They  returned  every 
night    during    the   first  week,  dusty, 
footsore,  tired,  and  hungry,  but  very 
jolly.     They  brought  in  great   store 
of  prodigious  hairy,  spiders — tarantu 
las — and  imprisoned  them  in  covered 
tumblers  up    stairs   in   the   "ranch." 

After  the  first  week,  they  had  to  camp  on  the  field,  for  they 
were  getting  w^ell  eastward.  They  made  a  good  many  in 
quiries  as  to  the  location  of  that  indefinite  "  certain  point,"  but 
got  no  information.  At  last,  to  a  peculiarly  urgent  inquiry 
of  "  How  far  eastward  ? "  Governor  Nye  telegraphed  back : 

"  To  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  blast  you  ! — and  then  bridge  it 
and  go  on ! " 

This  brought  back  the  dusty  toilers,  who  sent  in  a  report 
and  ceased  from  their  labors.  The  Governor  was  always  com 
fortable  about  it ;  he  said  Mrs.  OTlannigan  would  hold  him 
for  the  Brigade's  board  anyhow,  and  he  intended  to  get  what 
entertainment  he  could  out  of  the  boys ;  he  said,  with  his  old- 
time  pleasant  twinkle,  that  he  meant  to  survey  them  into  Utah 
and  then  telegraph  Brigham  to  hang  them  for  trespass ! 


TUE  TARANTULA. 


THE    TARANTULAS    LOOSE.  165 

The  surveyors  brought  back  more  tarantulas  with  them, 
and  so  we  had  quite  a  menagerie  arranged  along  the  shelves 
of  the  room.  Some  of  these  spiders  could  straddle  over  a 
common  saucer  with  their  hairy,  muscular  legs,  and  when 
their  feelings  were  hurt,  or  their  dignity  offended,  they  were 
the  wickedest-looking  desperadoes  the  animal  world  can  fur 
nish.  If  their  glass  pris 
on-houses  were  touched 
ever  so  lightly  they 
were  up  and  spoiling 
for  a  fight  in  a  minute. 
Starchy? — proud?  In 
deed,  they  would  take 
up  a  straw  and  pick  their  teeth  like  a  member  of  Congress. 
There  was  as  usual  a  furious  "zephyr"  blowing  the  first 
night  of  the  brigade's  return,  and  about  midnight  the  roof 
of  an  adjoining  stable  blew  off,  and  a  corner  of  it  came  crash 
ing  through  the  side  of  our  ranch.  There  was  a  simultane 
ous  awakening,  and  a  tumultuous  muster  of  the  brigade  in 
the  dark,  and  a  general  tumbling  and  sprawling  over  each 
other  in  the  narrow  aisle  between  the  bed-rows.  In  the 

midst  of  the  turmoil,  Bob  H sprung  up  out  of  a  sound 

sleep,  and  knocked  down  a  shelf -with  his  head.     Instantly  he 
shouted : 

"  Turn  out,  boys — the  tarantulas  is  loose !  " 
No  warning  ever  sounded  so  dreadful.  Nobody  tried,  any 
louger,  to  leave  the  room,  lest  he  might  step  on  a  tarantula. 
Every  man  groped  for  a  trunk  or  a  bed,  and  jumped  on  it. 
Then  followed  the  strangest  silence — a  silence  of  grisly  sus 
pense  it  was,  too — waiting,  expectancy,  fear.  It  was  as  dark 
as  pitch,  and  one  had  to  imagine  the  spectacle  of  those  four 
teen  scant-clad  men  roosting  gingerly  on  trunks  and  beds,  for 
not  a  thing  could  be  seen.  Then  came  occasional  little  inter 
ruptions  of  the  silence,  and  one  could  recognize  a  man  and 
tell  his  locality  by  his  voice,  or  locate  any  other  sound  a  suf 
ferer  made  by  his  gropings  or  changes  of  position.  The  occa 
sional  voices  were  not  given  to  much  speaking — you  simply 


166    MRS.    O'FLANNIGAN    COMES    TO    THE    RESCUE. 

heard  a  gentle  ejaculation  of  "  Ow ! "  followed  by  a  solid 
thump,  and  you  knew  the  gentleman  had  felt  a  hairy  blanket 
or  something  touch  his  bare  skin  and  had  skipped  from  a  bed 
to  the  floor.  Another  silence.  Presently  you  would  hear  a 
gasping  voice  say : 

"  Su-su-something's  crawling  up  the  back  of  my  neck  !  " 

Ever}7  now  and  then  you  could  hear  a  little  subdued  scram 
ble  and  a  sorrowful  "  O  Lord  ! "  and  then  you  knew  that  some 
body  was  getting  away  from  something  he  took  for  a  taran 
tula,  and  not  losing  any  time  about  it,  either.  Directly  a  voice 
in  the  corner  rang  out  wild  and  clear : 

"  Fve  got  him  !  I've  got  him ! "  [Pause,  and  probable 
change  of  circumstances.]  "  No,  he's  got  me !  Oh,  ain't  they 
never  going  to  fetch  a  lantern  ! " 

The  lantern  came  at  that  moment,  in  the  hands  of  Mrs. 
O'Flannigan,  whose  anxiety  to  know  the  amount  of  damage 


LIGHT   THROWN   ON   THE   SUBJECT. 


done  by  the  assaulting  roof  had  not  prevented  her  waiting  a 
judicious  interval,  after  getting  out  of  bed  and  lighting  up,  to 


ALL'S  WELL  THAT  ENDS  WELL.         167 

see  if  the  wind  was  done,  now,  up  stairs,  or  had  a  larger  con 
tract. 

The  landscape  presented  when  the  lantern  flashed  into  the 
room  was  picturesque,  and  might  have  been  funny  to  some 
people,  but  was  not  to  us.  Although  we  were  perched  so 
strangely  upon  boxes,  trunks  and  beds,  arid  so  strangely  at 
tired,  too,  we  were  too  earnestly  distressed  and  too  genuinely 
miserable  to  see  any  fun  about  it,  and  there  was  not  the  sem 
blance  of  a  smile  anywhere  visible.  I  know  I  am  not  capa 
ble  of  suffering  more  than  I  did  during  those  few  minutes  of 
suspense  in  the  dark,  surrounded  by  those  creeping,  bloody- 
minded  tarantulas.  I  had  skipped  from  bed  to  bed  and  from 
box  to  box  in  a  cold  agony,  and  every  time  I  touched  anything 
that  was  furzy  I  fancied  I  felt  the  fangs.  I  had  rather  go  to 
war  than  live  that  episode  over  again.  Nobody  was  hurt.  The 
man  who  thought  a  tarantula  had  "  got  him  "  was  mistaken — - 
only  a  crack  in  a  box  had  caught  his  finger.  Not  one  of  those 
escaped  tarantulas  was  ever  seen  again.  There  were  ten  or 
twelve  of  them.  We  took  candles  and  hunted  the  place  high 
and  low  for  them,  but  with  no  success.  Did  we  go  back  to 
bed  then  ?  We  did  nothing  of  the  kind.  Money  could  not 
have  persuaded  us  to  do  it.  We  sat  up  the  rest  of  the  night 
playing  cribbage  and  keeping  a  sharp  lookout  for  the  enemy. 


CHAPTEE    XXII. 

IT  was  the  end  of  August,  and  the  skies  were  cloudless  and 
the  weather  superb.  In  two  or  three  weeks  I  had  grown 
wonderfully  fascinated  with  the  curious  new  country,  and 
concluded  to  put  off  my  return  to  "the  States "  awhile.  I 
had  grown  well  accustomed  to  wearing  a  damaged  slouch  hat, 
blue  woolen  shirt,  and  pants  crammed  into  boot-tops,  and 
gloried  in  the  absence  of  coat,  vest  and  braces.  I  felt  rowdy- 
ish  and  "bully,"  (as  the  historian  Josephus  phrases  it,  in  his 
fine  chapter  upon  the  destruction  of  the  Temple).  It  seemed 
to  me  that  nothing  could  be  so  fine  and  so  romantic.  I  had 
become  an  officer  of  the  government,  but  that  was  for  mere 
sublimity .  The  office  was  an  unique  sinecure.  I  had  nothing 
to  do  and  no  salary.  I  was  private  Secretary  to  his  majesty 
the  Secretary  and  there  was  not  yet  writing  enough  for  two 
of  us.  So  Johnny  K and  I  devoted  our  time  to  amuse 
ment.  He  was  the  young  son  of  an  Ohio  nabob  and  was  out 
there  for  recreation.  He  got  it.  We  had  heard  a  world  of 
talk  about  the  marvellous  beauty  of  Lake  Tahoe,  and  finally 
curiosity  drove  us  thither  to  see  it.  Three  or  four  members 
of  the  Brigade  had  been  there  and  located  some  timber  lands 
on  its  shores  and  stored  up  a  quantity  of  provisions  in  their 
camp.  AYe  strapped  a  couple  of  blankets  on  our  shoulders 
and  took  an  axe  apiece  and  started — for  we  intended  to  take 
up  a  wood  ranch  or  so  ourselves  and  become  wealthy.  We 
were  on  foot.  The  reader  will  find  it  advantageous  to  go 
horseback.  We  were  told  that  the  distance  was  eleven  miles. 


BOUND  FOR  LAKE  TAHOE. 


169 


"We  tramped  a  long  time  on  level  ground,  and  then  toiled 
laboriously  up  a  mountain  about  a  thousand  miles  high  and 
looked  over.  No  lake  there.  We  descended  on  the  other 
side,  crossed  the  valley  and  toiled  up  another  mountain  three 
or  four  thousand  miles  high,  apparently,  and  looked  over  again. 
No  lake  yet.  We  sat  down  tired  and  perspiring,  and  hired  a 
couple  of  Chinamen  to  curse  those  people  who'  had  beguiled 
us.  Thus  refreshed,  we  presently  resumed  the  march  with 
renewed  vigor  and  determination.  We  plodded  on,  two  or 
three  hours  longer,  and  at  last  the  Lake  burst  upon  us — a 
noble  sheet  of  blue  water  lifted  six  thousand  three  hundred 
feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  and  walled  in  by  a  rim  of  snow- 
clad  mountain  peaks  that  towrered  aloft  full  three  thousand  feet 
higher  still !  It  was  a  vast  oval,  and  one  would  have  to  use 
up  eighty  or  a  hundred  good  miles  in  traveling  around  it.  As 
it  lay  there  with  the  shadows  of  the  mountains  brilliantly 
photographed  upon  its  still  surface  I  thought  it  must  surely 
be  the  fairest  picture  the  wrhole  earth  affords. 

We  found  the  small  skiff  belonging  to  the  Brigade  boys, 
and   without  loss  of  time 


set  out  across  a  deep  bend 
of  the  lake  toward  the  land 
marks  that  signified  the  lo 
cality  of  the  camp.  I  got 
Johnny  to  row  —  not  be 
cause  I  mind  exertion  my 
self,  but  because  it  makes 
me  sick  to  ride  backwards 
when  I  am  at  work.  But 
I  steered.  A  three-mile  pull  brought  us  to 
the  camp  just  as  the  night  fell,  and  we 
stepped  ashore  very  tired  and  wolfishly  hun 
gry.  In  a  "cache"  among  the  rocks  we  found 
the  provisions  and  the  cooking  utensils,  and  then,  all  fatigued 
as  I  was,  I  sat  down  on  a  boulder  and  superintended  while 
Johnny  gathered  wood  and  cooked  supper.  Many  a  man  who 
had  gone  through  what  I  had,  would  have  wanted  to  rest. 


I   STELKKL*. 


170 


CAMP    LIFE    AND    QUIET    CONSCIENCES. 


It  was  a  delicious  supper — hot  bread,  fried  bacon,  and 
black  coffee.  It  was  a  delicious  solitude  we  were  in,  too. 
Three  miles  away  was  a  saw-mill  and  some  workmen,  but 
there  were  not  fifteen  other  human  beings  throughout  the 
wide  circumference  of  the  lake.  As  the  darkness  closed  down 
and  the  stars  came  out  and  spangled  the  great  mirror  with 
jewels,  we  smoked  meditatively  in  the  solemn  hush  and  forgot 
our  troubles  and  our  pains.  In  due  time  we  spread  our 
blankets  in  the  warm  sand  between  two  large  boulders  and 
soon  feel  asleep,  careless  of  the  procession  of  ants  that  passed 
in  through  rents  in  our  clothing  and  explored  our  persons. 
Nothing  could  disturb  the  sleep  that  fettered  us,  for  it  had 
been  fairly  earned,  and  if  our  consciences  had  any  sins  on 
them  they  had  to  adjourn  court  for  that  night,  any  way.  The 
wind  rose  just  as  we  were  losing  consciousness,  and  we  were 
lulled  to  sleep  by  the  beating  of  the  surf  upon  the  shore. 

It  is  always  very  cold  on  that  lake  shore  in  the  night,  but 
we  had  plenty  of  blankets  and  were  warm  enough.  We  never 
moved  a  muscle  all  night,  but  waked  at 
early  dawn  in  the  original  positions,  and 
got  up  at  once,  thoroughly  refreshed, 
free  from  soreness,  and  brim  full  of 
friskiness.  There  is  no  end  of  whole 
some  medicine  in  such  an  experience. 
That  morning  we  could  have  whipped 
ten  such  people  as  we  were  the  day 
before — sick  ones  at  any  rate.  But  the 
world  is  slow,  and  people  will  go  to 
"  water  cures  "  and  "  movement  cures  " 
and  to  foreign  lands  for  health.  Three 
months  of  camp  life  on  Lake  Tahoe 
THE  INVALID.  would  restore  an  Egyptian  mummy  to 

his  pristine  vigor,  and  give  him  an  appetite  like  an  alligator. 
I  do  not  mean  the  oldest  and  driest  mummies,  of  course,  but  the 
fresher  ones.  The  air  up  there  in  the  clouds  is  very  pure  and 
fine,  bracing  and  delicious.  And  wrhy  shouldn't  it  be? — it  is 
the  same  the  angels  breathe.  I  think  that  hardly  any  amount 


A    PARADISE    FOR    INVALIDS. 


171 


fast   we  got 
skirted   along   the 


of  fatigue  can  be  gathered  together  that  a  man  cannot  sleep  off 
in  one  night  on  the  sand  by  its  side.  Not  under  a  roof,  but 
under  the  sky ;  it  seldom  or  never  rains  there  in  the  summer 
time.  I  know  a  man  who  went  there  to  die.  But  he  made  a 
failure  of  it.  He  was  a  skeleton  when  he  came,  and  could 
barely  stand.  He  had  no  appetite,  and  did  nothing  but  read 
tracts  and  reflect  on  the  future.  Three  months  later  he  was 
sleeping  out  of  doors  regularly,  eating  all  he  could  hold,  three 
times  a  day,  and  chasing  game  over  mountains  three  thousand 
feet  high  for  recreation.  And  he  was  a  skeleton  no  longer, 
but  weighed  part  of  a  ton.  This  is  no  fancy  sketch,  but  the 
truth.  His  disease  was  consumption.  I  confidently  commend 
his  experience  to  other  skeletons. 

I  superintended  again,  and  as  soon  as  we  had  eaten  break- 
in   the    boat  and 
lake    shore 

about  three  miles  and  disem 
barked.  We  liked  the  appear 
ance  of  the  place,  and  so  we 
claimed  some  three  hundred 
acres  of  it  and  stuck  our  "  no 
tices  "  on  a  tree.  It  was  yellow 
pine  timber  land — a  dense  forest 
of  trees  a  hundred  feet  high  and 
from  one  to  five  feet  through  at 
the  butt.  It  was  necessary  to 
fence  our  property  or  we  could 
not  hold  it.  That  is  to  say,  it  was 
necessary  to  cut  down  trees  here 
and  there  and  make  them  fall  in 
such  a  way  as  to  form  a  sort  of 
enclosure  (with  pretty  wide  gaps 
in  it).  We  cut  down  three  trees  apiece,  and  found  it  such 
heart-breaking  work  that  we  decided  to  "rest  our  case"  on 
those ;  if  they  held  the  property,  well  and  good ;  if  they 
didn't,  let  the  property  spill  out  through  the  gaps  and  go ;  it 
was  no  use  to  work  ourselves  to  death  merely  to  save  a  few 


THE   RESTORED. 


172 


SECURING    OUR    TITLE    TO    LANDS. 


acres  of  land.  Next  day  we  came  back  to  build  a  house — • 
for  a  house  was  also  necessary,  in  order  to  hold  the  property. 
"We  decided  to  build  a  substantial  log-house  and  excite  the 
envy  of  the  Brigade  boys ;  but  by  the  time  we  had  cut  and 
trimmed  the  first  log  it  seemed  unnecessary  to  be  so  elaborate, 
and  so  we  concluded  to  build  it  of  saplings.  However,  two 
saplings,  duly  cut  and  trimmed,  compelled  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  a  still  modester  architecture  would  satisfy  the  law, 
and  so  we  concluded  to  build  a  "brush"  house.  We  devoted 
the  next  day  to  this  work,  but  we  did  so  much  "sitting 
around  "  and  discussing,  that  by  the  middle  of  the  afternoon 
we  had  achieved  only  a  half-way  sort  of  affair  which  one  of  us 

had  to  watch  while  the  other 
cut  brush,  lest  if  both  turned 


our  backs  we  might  not  be 
able  to  find  it  again,  it  had 
such  a  strong  family  resem 
blance  to  the  surrounding 
vegetation.  But  we  were 
satisfied  with  it. 

We  were  land  owners 
now,  duly  seized  and  pos 
sessed,  and  within  the  pro 
tection  of  the  law.  There 
fore  we  decided  to  take  up 
our  residence  on  our  own 
domain  and  enjoy  that  large  sense  of 
independence  which  only  such  an  expe 
rience  can  bring.  Late  the  next  after 
noon,  after  a  good  long  rest,  we  sailed 
away  from  the  Brigade  camp  with  all 
the  provisions  and  cooking  utensils  we  could  carry  off — borrow 
is  the  more  accurate  word — and  just  as  the  night  was  falling 
we  beached  the  boat  at  our  own  landing. 


OUR  HOUSE. 


CHAPTEE    XXIII. 

IF  there  is  any  lite  that  is  happier  than  the  life  we  led  on  our 
timber  ranch  for  the  next  two  or  three  weeks,  it  must  be 
a  sort  of  life  which  I  have  not  read  of  in  books  or  experienced 
in  person.  "We  did  not  see  a  human  being  but  ourselves  during 
the  time,  or  hear  any  sounds  but  those  that  were  made  by  the 
wind  and  the  waves,  the  sighing  of  the  pines,  and  now  and 
then  the  far-off  thunder  of  an  avalanche.  The  forest  about  us 
was  dense  and  cool,  the  sky  above  us  was  cloudless  and  bril 
liant  with  sunshine,  the  broad  lake  before  us  was  glassy  and 
clear,  or  rippled  and  breezy,  or  black  and  storm-tossed,  accord 
ing  to  ^Nature's  mood ;  and  its  circling  border  of  mountain 
domes,  clothed  with  forests,  scarred  with  land-slides,  cloven  by 
canons  and  valleys,  and  helmeted  with  glittering  snow,  fitly 
framed  and  finished  the  noble  picture.  The  view  was  always 
fascinating,  bewitching,  entrancing.  The  eye  was  never  tired 
of  gazing,  night  or  day,  in  calm  or  storm ;  it  suffered  but  one 
grief,  and  that  was  that  it  could  not  look  always,  but  must  close 
sometimes  in  sleep. 

We  slept  in  the  sand  close  to  the  water's  edge,  between  two 
protecting  boulders,  which  took  care  of  the  stormy  night- winds 
for  us.  We  never  took  any  paregoric  to  make  us  sleep.  At 
the  first  break  of  dawn  we  were  always  up  and  running  foot 
races  to  tone  down  excess  of  physical  vigor  and  exuberance  of 
spirits.  That  is,  Johnny  was — but  I  held  his  hat.  While 
smoking  the  pipe  of  peace  after  breakfast  we  watched  the  sen 
tinel  peaks  put  on  the  glory  of  the  sun,  and  followed  the  con- 


174 


LAKE    TAHOE. 


quering  light  as  it  swept  down  among  the  shadows,  and  set  the 
captive  crags  and  forests  free.  We  watched  the  tinted  pictures 
grow  and  brighten  upon  the  water  till  every  little  detail  of 
forest,  precipice  and  pinnacle  was  wrought  in  and  finished,  and 
the  miracle  of  the  enchanter  complete.  Then  to  "  business." 

That  is,  drifting  around  in  the  boat.  We  were  on  the 
north  shore.  There,  the  rocks  on  the  bottom  are  sometimes 

gray,  sometimes  white. 
This  gives  the  marvelous 
transparency  of  the  water 
a  fuller  advantage  than  it 
has  elsewhere  on  the  lake. 
We  usually  pushed  out  a 
hundred  yards  or  so  from 
shore,  and  then  lay  down 
on  the  thwarts,  in  the 
sun,  and  let  the  boat 
drift  by  the  hour  whither  it  would.  We 
seldom  talked.  It  interrupted  the  Sabbath 
stillness,  and  marred  the  dreams  the  luxuri 
ous  rest  and  indolence  brought.  The  shore 
all  along  was  indented  with  deep,  curved  bays  and  coves, 
bordered  by  narrow  sand-beaches ;  and  where  the  sand  ended, 
the  steep  mountain-sides  rose  right  up  aloft  into  space — rose 
up  like  a  vast  wall  a  little  out  of  the  perpendicular,  and 
thickly  wooded  with  tall  pines. 

So  singularly  clear  \vas  the  water,  that  where  it  was  only 
twenty  or  thirty  feet  deep  the  bottom  was  so  perfectly  distinct 
that  the  boat  seemed  floating  in  the  air !  Yes,  where  it  was 
even  eighty  feet  deep.  Every  little  pebble  was  distinct,  every 
speckled  trout,  every  hand's-breadth  of  sand.  Often,  as  we  lay 
on  our  faces,  a  granite  boulder,  as  large  as  a  village  church, 
would  start  out  of  the  bottom  apparently,  and  seem  climbing 
up  rapidly  to  the  surface,  till  presently  it  threatened  to  touch 
our  faces,  and  we  could  not  resist  the  impulse  to  seize  an  oar 
and  avert  the  danger.  But  the  boat  would  float  on,  and  the 
boulder  descend  again,  and  then  we  could  see  that  when  we 


AT  BUSINESS. 


HAPPY    INDOLENCE.  175 

had  been  exactly  above  it,  it  must  still  have  been  twenty  or 
thirty  feet  below  the  surface.  Down  through  the  transparency 
of  these  great  depths,  the  water  was  not  merely  transparent, 
but  dazzlingly,  brilliantly  so.  All  objects  seen  through  it  had 
a  bright,  strong  vividness,  not  only  of  outline,  but  of  every 
minute  detail,  which  they  would  not  have  had  when  seen 
simply  through  the  same  depth  of  atmosphere.  So  empty  and 
airy  did  all  spaces  seem  below  us,  and  so  strong  was  the  sense 
of  floating  high  aloft  in  mid-nothingness,  that  we  called  these 
boat-excursions  "  balloon-voyages." 

We  lished  a  good  deal,  but  we  did  not  average  one  fish  a 
week.  We  could  see  trout  by  the  thousand  winging  about  in 
the  emptiness  under  us,  or  sleeping  in  shoals  on  the  bottom,  but 
they  would  not  bite — they  could  see  the  line  too  plainly,  per 
haps.  We  frequently  selected  the  trout  we  wanted,  and  rested 
the  bait  patiently  and  persistently  011  the  end  of  his  nose  at  a 
depth  of  eighty  feet,  but  he  would  only  shake  it  off  with  an. 
annoyed  manner,  and  shift  his  position. 

We  bathed  occasionally,  but  the  water  was  rather  chilly,  for 
all  it  looked  so  sunny.  Sometimes  we  rowed  out  to  the  "  blue 
water,"  a  mile  or  two  from  shore.  It  was  as  dead  blue  as  in 
digo  there,  because  of  the  immense  depth.  By  official  measure 
ment  the  lake  in  its  centre  is  one  thousand  five  hundred  and 
twenty-five  feet  deep ! 

Sometimes,  on  lazy  afternoons,  we  lolled  on  the  sand  in 
camp,  and  smoked  pipes  and  read  some  old  well-worn  novels. 
At  night,  by  the  camp-fire,  we  played  euchre  and  seven-up  to 
strengthen  the  mind — and  played  them  with  cards  so  greasy 
and  defaced  that  only  a  whole  summer's  acquaintance  with 
them  could  enable  the  student  to  tell  the  ace  of  clubs  from  the 
jack  of  diamonds. 

We  never  slept  in  our  "  house."  It  never  recurred  to  us, 
for  one  thing ;  and  besides,  it  was  built  to  hold  the  ground, 
and  that  was  enough.  We  did  not  wish  to  strain  it. 

By  and  by  our  provisions  began  to  run  short,  and  we 
went  back  to  the  old  camp  and  laid  in  a  new  supply.  We 
were  gone  all  day,  and  reached  home  again  about  night-fall, 


176  A    CONFLAGRATION. 

pretty  tired  and  hungry.  While  Johnny  was  carrying  the 
main  bulk  of  the  provisions  up  to  our  u  house  "  for  future  use, 
I  took  the  loaf  of  bread,  some  slices  of  bacon,  and  the  coffee-pot, 
ashore,  set  them  down  by  a  tree,  lit  a  fire,  and  went  back  to  the 
boat  to  get  the  frying-pan.  While  I  was  at  this,  I  heard  a 
shout  from  Johnny,  and  looking  up  I  saw  that  my  fire  was 
galloping  all  over  the  premises  ! 

Johnny  was  on  the  other  side  of  it.  He  had  to  run  through 
the  flames  to  get  to  the  lake  shore,  and  then  we  stood  helpless 
and  watched  the  devastation. 

The  ground  was  deeply  carpeted  with  dry  pine-needles,  and 
the  fire  touched  them  off  as  if  they  were  gunpowder.  It  was 
wonderful  to  see  with  what  fierce  speed  the  tall  sheet  of  flame 
traveled!  My  coffee-pot  was  gone,  and  everything  with  it. 
In  a  minute  and  a  half  the  fire  seized  upon  a  dense  growth  of 
dry  manzanita  chapparal  six  or  eight  feet  high,  and  then  the 
roaring  and  popping  and  crackling  was  something  terrific.  We 
were  driven  to  the  boat  by  the  intense  heat,  and  there  we  re 
mained,  spell-bound. 

Within  half  an  hour  all  before  us  was  a  tossing,  blinding 
tempest  of  flame !  It  went  surging  up  adjacent  ridges — sur 
mounted  them  and  disappeared  in  the  canons  beyond — burst 
into  view  upon  higher  and  farther  ridges,  presently — shed  a 
grander  illumination  abroad,  and  dove  again — flamed  out  again, 
directly,  higher  and  still  higher  up  the  mountain-side — threw 
out  skirmishing  parties  of  fire  here  and  there,  and  sent  them 
trailing  their  crimson  spirals  away  among  remote  ramparts 
and  ribs  and  gorges,  till  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach  the  lofty 
mountain-fronts  were  webbed  as  it  were  with  a  tangled  net 
work  of  red  lava  streams.  Away  across  the  water  the  crags 
and  domes  were  lit  with  a  ruddy  glare,  and  the  firmament  above 
was  a  reflected  hell ! 

Every  feature  of  the  spectacle  was  repeated  in  the  glowing 
mirror  of  the  lake !  Both  pictures  were  sublime,  both  were 
beautiful ;  but  that  in  the  lake  had  a  bewildering  richness  about  it 
that  enchanted  the  eye  and  held  it  with  the  stronger  fascination. 

We  sat  absorbed  and  motionless  through  four  long  hours. 


FIRE  AT  LAKE  TAHOE. 


A    STORM    ON    THE    LAKE.  177 

We  never  thought  of  supper,  and  never  felt  fatigue.  But  at 
eleven  o'clock  the  conflagration  had  traveled  beyond  our  range 
of  vision,  and  then  darkness  stole  down  upon  the  landscape 
again. 

Hunger  asserted  itself  now,  but  there  was  nothing  to  eat. 
The  provisions  were  all  cooked,  no  doubt,  but  we  did  not  go 
to  see.  We  were  homeless  wanderers  again,  without  any  pro 
perty.  Our  fence  wras  gone,  our  house  burned  down ;  no  in 
surance.  Our  pine  forest  was  well  scorched,  the  dead  trees  all 
burned  up,  and  our  broad  acres  of  manzanita  swept  away. 
Our  blankets  were  on  our  usual  sand-bed,  however,  and  so  we 
lay  down  and  went  to  sleep.  The  next  morning  we  started 
back  to  the  old  camp,  but  while  out  a  long  way  from  shore,  so 
great  a  storrn  came  up  that  we  dared  not  try  to  land.  So  I 
baled  out  the  seas  we  shipped,  and  Johnny  pulled  heavily 
through  the  billows  till  we  had  reached  a  point  three  or  four 
miles  beyond  the  camp.  The  storm  was  increasing,  and  it  be 
came  evident  that  it  was  better  to  take  the  hazard  of  beaching 
the  boat  than  go  down  in  a  hundred  fathoms  of  water ;  so  we 
ran  in,  with  tall  white-caps  following,  and  I  sat  down  in  the 
stern-sheets  and  pointed  her  head-on  to  the  shore.  The  instant 
the  bow  struck,  a  wave  came  over  the  stern  that  washed  crew 
and  cargo  ashore,  and  saved  a  deal  of  trouble.  We  shivered 
in  the  lee  of  a  boulder  all  the  rest  of  the  day,  and  froze  all 
the  night  through.  In  the  morning  the  tempest  had  gone 
down,  and  we  paddled  down  to  the  camp  without  any  unneces 
sary  delay.  We  were  so  starved  that  we  ate  up  the  rest  of  the 
Brigade's  provisions,  and  then  set  out  to  Carson  to  tell  them 
about  it  and  ask  their  forgiveness.  It  was  accorded,  upon 
payment  of  damages. 

We  made  many  trips  to  the  lake  after  that,  and  had  many 
a  hair-breadth  escape  and  blood-curdling  adventure  which  will 
never  be  recorded  in  any  history. 

12f 


CHAPTER   XXIV. 

IEESOLYED  to  have  a  horse  to  ride.  I  had  never  seen  such 
wild,  free,  magnificent  horsemanship  outside  of  a  circus 
as  these  picturesquely-clad  Mexicans,  Californians  and  Mexi- 
canized  Americans  displayed  in  Carson  streets  every  day. 
How  they  rode  !  Leaning  just  gently  forward  out  of  the  per 
pendicular,  easy  and  nonchalant,  with  broad  slouch-hat  brim 
blown  square  up  in  front,  and  long  riata  swinging  above  the 
head,  they  swept  through  the  town  like  the  wind !  The  next 
minute  they  were  only  a  sailing  puff  of  dust  on  the  far  desert. 
If  they  trotted,  they  sat  up  gallantly  and  gracefully,  and 
seemed  part  of  the  horse  ;  did  not  go  jiggering  up  and  down 
after  the  silly  Miss-Nancy  fashion  of  the  riding-schools.  I  had 
quickly  learned  to  tell  a  horse  from  a  cow,  and  was  full  of 
anxiety  to  learn  more.  I  was  resolved  to  buy  a  horse. 

While  the  thought  was  rankling  in  my  mind,  the  auctioneer 
came  skurrying  through  the  plaza  on  a  black  beast  that  had  as 
many  humps  and  corners  on  him  as  a  dromedary,  and  was 
necessarily  uncomely ;  but  he  was  "  going,  going,  at  twenty- 
two  ! — horse,  saddle  and  bridle  at  twenty-two  dollars,  gentle 
men  ! "  and  I,  could  hardly  resist. 

A  man  whom  I  did  not  know  (he  turned  out  to  be  the 
auctioneer's  brother)  noticed  the  wistful  look  in  my  eye,  and 
observed  that  that  was  a  very  remarkable  horse  to  be  going  at 
such  a  price ;  and  added  that  the  saddle  alone  was  worth  the 
money.  It  was  a  Spanish  saddle,  with  ponderous  tapidaros, 
and  furnished  with  the  ungainly  bole-leather  covering  with 


A    MEXICAN    PLUG. 


179 


the  unspellable  name.  I  said  I  had  half  a  notion  to  bid. 
TlieD  this  keen-eyed  person  appeared  to  me  to  be  "  taking  my 
measure"  ;  but  I  dismissed  the  suspicion  when  he  spoke,  for  his 
manner  was  full  of  guileless  candor  and  truthfulness.  Said  he  : 
"  I  know  that  horse — know  him  well.  You  are  a  stranger, 
I  take  it,  and  so  you  might  think  he  was  an  American  horse, 


"  YOU  MIGHT  THINK  HIM  AN  AMERICAN  HORSE. 


maybe,  but  I  assure  you  he  is  not.  He  is  nothing  of  the  kind  ; 
but — excuse  my  speaking  in  a  low  voice,  other  people  being 
near — he  is,  without  the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  a  Genuine  Mexi 
can  Plug ! " 

I  did  not  know  what  a  Genuine  Mexican  Plug  was,  but 
there  was  something  about  this  man's  way  of  saying  it,  that 
made  me  swear  inwardly  that  I  would  own  a  Genuine  Mexi 
can  Plug,  or  die. 

"Has  he  any  other — er — advantages?"  I  inquired,  sup 
pressing  what  eagerness  I  could. 


ISO 


MOST    THOROUGHLY    BUCKED. 


He  hooked  his  forefinger  in  the  pocket  of  my  army-shirt, 
led  me  to  one  side,  and  breathed  in  my  ear  impressively  these 
words : 

"  He  can  out-buck  anything  in  America !  " 
"  Going,  going,  going — at  twent-ty-fouY  dollars  and  a  half, 
gen— 

"  Twenty-seven  !  "  I  shouted,  in  a  frenzy. 
"  And  sold ! "   said  the  auctioneer,  and  passed  over  the 
Genuine  Mexican  Plug  to  me. 

I  could  scarcely  contain  my  exultation.  I  paid  the  money, 
and  put  the  animal  in  a  neighboring  livery-stable  to  dine  and 
rest  himself. 

In  the  afternoon  I  brought  the  creature  into  the  plaza, 
and  certain  citizens  held  him  by  the  head,  and  others  by 

the  tail,  while  I  mounted 

him.  As  soon  as  they  let 
go,  he  placed  all  his  feet 
in  a  bunch  together,  low 
ered  his  back,  and  then 
suddenly  arched  it  upward, 
and  shot  me  straight  into 
the  air  a  matter  of  three 
or  four  feet !  I  came  as 
straight  down  again,  lit  in 
the  saddle,  went  instantly 
up  again,  came  down  al 
most  on  the  high  pommel, 
shot  up  again,  and  came 
down  on  the  horse's  neck— 
all  in  the  space  of  three  or 
four  seconds.  Then  he  rose 
and  stood  almost  straight 
up  on  his  hind  feet,  and  I, 
clasping  his  lean  neck  des- 

perately,  slid  back  into  the  saddle,  and  held  on.  He  came 
down,  and  immediately  hoisted  his  heels  into  the  air,  d  eliver- 
ing  a  vicious  kick  at  the  sky,  and  stood  on  his  forefeet. 


OLD    ABE    CURRY. 


181 


And  then  down  lie  came  once  more,  and  began  the  original 
exercise  of  shooting  me  straight  up  again.  The  third  time  I 
went  up  I  heard  a  stranger  say : 

"  Oh,  dortt  he  buck,  though !  " 

While  I  was  up,  somebody  struck  the  horse  a  sounding 
thwack  with  a  leathern  strap,  and  when  I  arrived  again  the 
Genuine  Mexican  Plug  was  not  there.  A  Californian  youth 
chased  him  up  and  caught  him,  and  asked  if  he  might  have  a 
ride.  I  granted  him  that  luxury.  lie  mounted  the  Genuine, 
got  lifted  into  the  air  once, 
but  sent  his  spurs  home  as 
he  descended,  and  the  horse 
darted  away  like  a  tele 
gram,  lie  soared  over 
three  fences  like  a  bird, 
and  disappeared  down  the 
road  toward  the  Washoe 
Valley. 

I  sat  down  on  a  stone, 
with  a  sigh,  and  by  a  nat 
ural  impulse  one  of  my 
hands  sought  my  forehead, 
and  the  other  the  base  of 
my  stomach.  I  believe  I 
never  appreciated,  till  then,  the  poverty  of  the  human  ma 
chinery — for  I  still  needed  a  hand  or  two  to  place  elsewhere. 
Pen  cannot  describe  how  I  wras  jolted  up.  Imagination  can 
not  conceive  how  disjointed  I  was — how  internally,  externally 
and  universally  I  was  unsettled,  mixed  up  and  ruptured. 
There  wras  a  sympathetic  crowd  around  me,  though . 

One  elderly-looking  comforter  said : 

"  Stranger,  you've  been  taken  in.  Everybody  in  this 
camp  knows  that  horse.  Any  child,  any  Injun,  could  have 
told  you  that  he'd  buck ;  he  is  the  very  worst  devil  to  buck  on 
the  continent  of  America.  You  hear  me.  I'm  Curry.  Old 
Curry.  Old  Abe  Curry.  And  moreover,  he  is  a  simon-pure, 
out-and-out,  genuine  d — d  Mexican  plug,  and  an  uncommon 


UNIVERSALLY  UNSETTLED. 


182 


RIDING    THE    PLUG. 


mean  one  at  that,  too.  Why,  you  turnip,  if  you  had  laid  low 
and  kept  dark,  there's  chances  to  buy  an  American  horse  for 
mighty  little  more  than  you  paid  for  that  bloody  old  foreign 
relic." 

I  gave  no  sign  ;  but  I  made  up  my  mind  that  if  the 
auctioneer's  brother's  funeral  took  place  while  I  was  in  the 
Territory  I  would  postpone  all  other  recreations  and  attend  it. 

After  a  gallop  of  sixteen  miles  the  Californian  youth  and 
the  Genuine  Mexican  Plug  came  tearing  into  town  again, 
shedding  foam-flakes  like  the  spume-spray  that  drives  before  a 
typhoon,  and,  with  one  final  skip  over  a  wheelbarrow  and  a 
Chinaman,  cast  anchor  in  front  of  the  "  ranch." 

Such  panting  and  blowing  !  Such  spreading  and  contract 
ing  of  the  red  equine  nostrils,  and  glaring  of  the  wild  equine 


eye  !      But  was  the  imperial  beast  subjugated 


Indeed  he 
wasnot. 
His  lord 
ship  the 
Speaker  of 
the  House 
thought  he 
was,  and 
mounted 
him  to  go 
down  to  the 
Capitol;  but 
the  first 
dash  the 
creature 

made  was  over  a  pile  of  telegraph  poles  half  as  high  as  a 
church  ;  and  his  time  to  the  Capitol  —  one  mile  and  three 
quarters  —  remains  unbeaten  to  this  day.  But  then  he  took  an 
advantage  —  he  left  out  the  mile,  and  only  did  the  three  quar 
ters.  That  is  to  say,  he  made  a  straight  cut  across  lots,  prefer 
ring  fences  and  ditches  to  a  crooked  road  ;  and  when  the 
Speaker  got  to  the  Capitol  he  said  he  had  been  in  the  air  so 
much  he  felt  as  if  he  had  made  the  trip  on  a  comet. 


RIDING     THE     PLUG. 


EFFORTS    TO    SELL. 


In  the  evening  the  Speaker  came  home  afoot  for  exercise, 
and  got  the  Genuine  towed  back  behind  a  quartz  wagon. 
The  next  day  I  loaned  the  animal  to  the  Clerk  of  the  House 
to  go  down  to  the  Dana  silver  mine,  six  miles,  and  he  walked 

back  for  exercise,  and 
got  the  horse  towed. 
Everybody  I  loaned 
him  to  always  walked 
back ;  they  never  could 
get  enough  exercise 
any  other  way.  Still, 
I  continued  to  loan 
him  to  anybody  who 
was  willing  to  borrow 
him,  my  idea  being  to 
get  him  crippled,  and 
throw  him  on  the  bor 
rower's  hands,  or  killed, 
and  make  the  borrower 
pay  for  him.  But  some 
how  nothing  ever  hap 
pened  to  him.  He  took 
chances  that  no  other 


WANTED  EXERCISE. 


horse  ever  took  and 
survived,  but  he  always  came  out  safe.  It  was  his  daily 
habit  to  try  experiments  that  had  always  before  been  con 
sidered  impossible,  but  he  always  got  through.  Sometimes 
he  miscalculated  a  little,  and  did  not  get  his  rider  through  in 
tact,  but  he  always  got  through  himself.  Of  course  I  had 
tried  to  sell  him ;  but  that  was  a  stretch  of  simplicity  which 
met  with  little  sympathy.  The  auctioneer  stormed  up  and 
down  the  streets  on  him  for  four  days,  dispersing  the  populace, 
interrupting  business,  and  destroying  children,  and  never  got  a 
bid — at  least  never  any  but  the  eighteen-dollar  one  he  hired 
a  notoriously  substanceless  bummer  to  make.  The  people 
only  smiled  pleasantly,  and  restrained  their  desire  to  buy,  if 
they  had  any.  Then  the  auctioneer  brought  in  his  bill,  and  1 


184  THE    ANIMAL    DISPOSED    OF. 

withdrew  the  horse  from  the  market.  "We  tried  to  trade  him 
off  at  private  vendue  next,  offering  him  at  a  sacrifice  for 
second-hand  tombstones,  old  iron,  temperance  tracts — any 
kind  of  property.  But  holders  were  stiff,  and  we  retired  from 
the  market  again.  I  never  tried  to  ride  the  horse  any  more. 
Walking  was  good  enough  exercise  for  a  man  like  me,  that 
had  nothing  the  matter  writh  him  except  ruptures,  internal  in 
juries,  and  such  things.  Finally  I  tried  to  give  him  away. 
But  it  was  a  failure.  Parties  said  earthquakes  were  handy 
enough  on  the  Pacific  coast — they  did  not  wish  to  own  one. 
As  a  last  resort  I  offered  him  to  the  Governor  for  the  use  of 
the  "Brigade."  His  face  lit  up  eagerly  at  first,  but  toned 
down  again,  and  he  said  the  thing  would  be  too  palpable. 

Just  then  the  livery  stable  man  brought  in  his  bill  for  six 
weeks'  keeping — stall-room  for  the  horse,  fifteen  dollars ;  hay 
for  the  horse,  two  hundred  and  fifty !  The  Genuine  Mexican 
Plug  had  eaten  a  ton  of  the  article,  and  the  man  said  he  would 
have  eaten  a  hundred  if  he  had  let  him. 

I  will  remark  here,  in  all  seriousness,  that  the  regular  price 
of  hay  during  that  year  and  a  part  of  the  next  was  really  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  ton.  During  a  part  of  the  previous 
year  it  had  sold  at  five  hundred  a  ton,  in  gold,  and  during  the 
winter  before  that  there  was  such  scarcity  of  the  article  that 
in  several  instances  small  quantities  had  brought  eight  hundred 
dollars  a  ton  in  coin !  The  consequence  might  be  guessed 
without  my  telling  it:  peopled  turned  their  stock  loose  to 
starve,  and  before  the  spring  arrived  Carson  and  Eagle  valleys 
were  almost  literally  carpeted  with  their  carcases !  Any  old 
settler  there  will  verify  these  statements. 

I  managed  to  pay  the  livery  bill,  and  that  same  day  I  gave 
the  Genuine  Mexican  Plug  to  a  passing  Arkansas  emigrant 
whom  fortune  delivered  into  my  hand.  If  this  ever  meets  his 
eye,  he  will  doubtless  remember  the  donation. 

Now  whoever  has  had  the  luck  to  ride  a  real  Mexican  plug 
will  recognize  the  animal  depicted  in  this  chapter,  and  hardly 
consider  him  exaggerated — but  the  uninitiated  wrill  feel  justi 
fied  in  regarding  his  portrait  as  a  fancy  sketch,  perhaps. 


OHAPTEE    XXY. 


Nevada  was  a  part  of  Utah  and  was 
called  Carson  county  ;  and  a  pretty  large  county  it  was, 
too.  Certain  of  its  valleys  produced  no  end  of  hay,  and  this 
attracted  small  colonies  of  Mormon  stock-raisers  and  farmers 
to  them.  A  few  orthodox  Americans  straggled  in  from  Cali 
fornia,  but  no  love  was  lost  between  the  two  classes  of  colo 
nists.  There  was  little  or  no  friendly  intercourse  ;  each  party 
staid  to  itself.  The  Mormons  were  largely  in  the  majority, 
and  had  the  additional  advantage  of  being  peculiarly  under 
the  protection  of  the  Mormon  government  of  the  Territory. 
Therefore  they  could  afford  to  be  distant,  and  even  peremptory 
toward  their  neighbors.  One  of  the  traditions  of  Carson 
Valley  illustrates  the  condition  of  things  that  prevailed  at  the 
time  I  speak  of.  The  hired  girl  of  one  of  the  American 
families  was  Irish,  and  a  Catholic  ;  yet  it  was  noted  with  sur 
prise  that  she  was  the  only  person  outside  of  the  Mormon  ring 
who  could  get  favors  fronv  the  Mormons.  She  asked  kind 
nesses  of  them  often,  and  always  got  them.  It  was  a  mystery 
to  everybody.  But  one  day  as  she  was  passing  out  at  the 
door,  a  large  bowie  knife  dropped  from  under  her  apron,  and 
when  her  mistress  asked  for  an  explanation  she  observed  that 
she  was  going  out  to  "  borry  a  wash-tub  from  the  Mormons  !  " 
In  1858  silver  lodes  were  discovered  in  "  Carson  County," 
and  then  the  aspect  of  things  changed.  Californians  began  to 
flock  in,  and  the  American  element  was  soon  in  the  majority. 


186 


EMIGRANT 


OFFICIALS    APPOINTED. 


Allegiance  to  Brigliam  Young  and  Utah  was  renounced, 
a  temporary  territorial  government  for  "Washoe"  was  insti 
tuted  by  the  citizens.  Governor  Roop  was  the  first  and  only 
chief  magistrate  of  it.  In  due  course  of  time  Congress  passed 
a  bill  to  organize  "  Nevada  Territory,"  and  President  Lincoln 
sent  out  Governor  Nye  to  supplant  Roop. 

At  this  time  the  population  of  the  Territory  was  about 
twelve  or  fifteen  thousand,  and  rapidly  increasing.     Silver 

mines  were 
being  vigor 
ously  devel 
oped  and 
silver  mills 
erected. 
Business  of 
all  kinds  was 
active  and 
prosperous 
and  growing 
more  so  day 
by  day. 

The  peo 
ple  were  glad 
to  have  a  le- 
gitimately 
constituted 
government, 
but  did  not 
particularly 
enjoy  having 
strangers 
from  distant 
States  put  in 
authority 

over  them — a  sentiment  that  was  natural  enough.  They  thought 
the  officials  should  have  been  chosen  from  among  themselves 
*— from  among  prominent  citizens  who  had  earned  a  right  to 


w 


BORROWING  MADE  EASY. 


FUNNY    STRUGGLES    FOR     EXISTENCE.  187 

such  promotion,  and  who  would  be  in  sympathy  with  the 
populace  and  likewise  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  needs 
of  the  Territory.  They  were  right  in  viewing  the  matter 
thus,  without  doubt.  The  new  officers  were  "  emigrants," 
and  that  was  no  title  to  anybody's  affection  or  admiration 
either. 

The  new  government  was  received  with  considerable  cool 
ness.  It  was  not  only  a  foreign  intruder,  but  a  poor  one.  It 
was  not  even  worth  plucking — except  by  the  smallest  of  small 
fry  office-seekers  and  such.  Everybody  knew  that  Congress 
had  appropriated  only  twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year  in  green 
backs  for  its  support — about  money  enough  to  run  a  quartz 
mill  a  month.  And  everybody  knew,  also,  that  the  first  year's 
money  was  still  in  Washington,  and  that  the  getting  hold  of 
it  would  be  a  tedious  and  difficult  process.  Carson  City  was 
too  wary  and  too  wTise  to  open  up  a  credit  account  with  the 
imported  bantling  with  anything  like  indecent  haste. 

There  is  something  solemnly  funny  about  the  struggles  of 
anew-born  Territorial  government  to  get  a  start  in  this  world. 
Ours  had  a  trying  time  of  it.  The  Organic  Act  and  the 
"  instructions  "  from  the  State  Department  commanded  that  a 
legislature  should  be  elected  at  such-and-such  a  time,  and  its 
sittings  inaugurated  at  such-and-such  a  date.  It  was  easy  to 
get  legislators,  even  at  three  dollars  a  day,  although  board  was 
four  dollars  and  fifty  cents,  for  distinction  has  its  charm  in 
Nevada  as  well  as  elsewhere,  and  there  were  plenty  of  patriotic 
souls  oat  of  employment ;  but  to  get  a  legislative  hall  for  them 
to  meet  in  was  another  matter  altogether.  Carson  blandly 
declined  to  give  a  room  rent-free,  or  let  one  to  the  government 
on  credit. 

But  when  Curry  heard  of  the  difficulty,  he  came  forward, 
solitary  and  alone,  and  shouldered  the  Ship  of  State  over  the 
bar  and  got  her  afloat  again.  I  refer  to  "  Curry — Old  Curry 
— Old  Abe  Curry."  But  for  him  the  legislature  would  have 
been  obliged  to  sit  in  the  desert.  He  offered  his  large  stone 
building  just  outside  the  capital  limits,  rent-free,  and  it  was 
gladly  accepted.  Then  he  built  a  horse-railroad  from  town 


188   "OLD  ABE  CURRY"  BACKS  THE  GOVERNMENT. 

to   the  capitol,  and  carried  the  legislators  gratis.      He  also 
furnished  pine  benches  and   chairs  for  the   legislature,   and 


FREE    RIDES. 


covered  the  floors  with  clean  saw-dust  by  way  of  carpet  and 
spittoon  combined.  But  for  Curry  the  government  would 
have  died  in  its  tender  infancy.  A  canvas  partition  to  sepa 
rate  the  Senate  from  the  House  of  Representatives  was  put 
up  by  the  Secretary,  at  a  cost  of  three  dollars  and  forty  cents, 
but  the  United  States  declined  to  pay  for  it.  Upon  being  re 
minded  that  the  "  instructions "  permitted  the  payment  of  a 
liberal  rent  for  a  legislative  hall,  and  that  that  money  was  saved 
to  the  country  by  Mr.  Curry's  generosity,  the  United  States 
said  that  did  not  alter  the  matter,  and  the  three  dollars  and 
forty  cents  would  be  subtracted  from  the  Secretary's  eighteen 
hundred  dollar  salary — and  it  was  ! 

The  matter  of  printing  was  from  the  beginning  an  inter 
esting  feature  of  the  new  government's  difficulties.  The 
Secretary  was  sworn  to  obey  his  volume  of  written  "  instruc 
tions,"  and  these  commanded  him  to  do  two  certain  things 
without  fail,  viz. : 

1.  Get  the  House  and  Senate  journals  printed  ;  and, 

2.  For  this   work,   pay   one   dollar   and    fifty   cents  per 
"  thousand "  for  composition,  and  one  dollar  and  fifty  cents 
per  "  token  "  for  press-work,  in  greenbacks. 

It  was  easy  to  swear  to  do  these  two  things,  but  it  was  en 
tirely  impossible  to  do  more  than  one  of  them.  "When  green 
backs  had  gone  down  to  forty  cents  on  the  dollar,  the  prices 
regularly  charged  everybody  by  printing  establishments  were 
one  dollar  and  fifty  cents  per  "thousand"  and  one  dollar  and 


ECONOMY    NOT    APPRECIATED.  189 

fifty  cents  per  "  token,"  in  gold.  The  "  instructions "  com 
manded  that  the  Secretary  regard  a  paper  dollar  issued  by  the 
government  as  equal  to  any  other  dollar  issued  by  the  .gov 
ernment.  Hence  the  printing  of  the  journals  was  dis 
continued.  Then  the  United  States  sternly  rebuked  the 
Secretary  for  disregarding  the  "instructions,"  and  warned  him 
to  correct  his  ways.  Wherefore  he  got  some  printing  done, 
forwarded  the  bill  to  Washington  with  full  exhibits  *of  the 
high  prices  of  things  in  the  Territory,  and  called  attention  to 
a  printed  market  report  wherein  it  would  be  observed  that 
even  hay  was  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  ton.  The 
United  States  responded  by  subtracting  the  printing-bill  from 
the  Secretary's  suffering  salary — and  moreover  remarked  with 
dense  gravity  that  he  would  find  nothing  in  his  "  instructions  " 
requiring  him  to  purchase  hay  ! 

Nothing  in  this  world  is  palled  in  such  impenetrable 
obscurity  as  a  U.  S.  Treasury  Comptroller's  understanding. 
The  very  fires  of  the  hereafter  could  get  up  nothing  more 
than  a  fitful  glimmer  in  it.  In  the  days  I  speak  of  he  never 
could  be  jnade  to  comprehend  why  it  was  that  twenty 
thousand  dollars  would  not  go  as  far  in  Nevada,  where  all 
commodities  ranged  at  an  enormous  figure,  as  it  would  in  the 
other  Territories,  where  exceeding  cheapness  was  the  rule. 
He  was  an  officer  who  looked  out  for  the  little  expenses  all 
the  time.  The  Secretary  of  the  Territory  kept  his  office  in 
his  bedroom,  as  I  before  remarked;  and  he  charged  the 
United  States  no  rent,  although  his  "  instructions  "  provided 
for  that  item  and  he  could  have  justly  taken  advantage  of  it 
(a  thing  which  I  would  have  done  with  more  than  lightning 
promptness  if  I  had  been  Secretary  myself).  But  the  United 
States  never  applauded  this  devotion.  Indeed,  I  think  my 
country  was  ashamed  to  have  so  improvident  a  person  in  its 
employ. 

Those  "instructions"  (we  used  to  read  a  chapter  from 
them  every  morning,  as  intellectual  gymnastics,  and  a  couple 
of  chapters  in  Sunday  school  every  Sabbath,  for  they  treated 
of  all  subjects  under  the  sun  and  had  much  valuable  religious 


190      THE  SECRETARY'S  SALARY  SUFFERS. 

matter  in  them  along  with,  the  other  statistics)  those  "  instruc 
tions"  commanded  that  pen-knives,  envelopes,  pens  and 
writing-paper  be  furnished  the  members  of  the  legislature. 
So  the  Secretary  made  the  purchase  and  the  distribution. 
The  knives  cost  three  dollars  apiece.  There  was  one  too 
many,  and  the  Secretary  gave  it  to  the  Clerk  of  the  House  of 
Representatives.  The  United  States  said  the  Clerk  of  the 
House  was  not  a  "  member  "  of  the  legislature,  and  took  that 
three  dollars  out  of  the  Secretary's  salary,  as  usual. 

White  men  charged  three  or  four  dollars  a  uload"  for 
sawing  up  stove-wood.  The  Secretary  was  sagacious  enough 
to  know  that  the  United  States  would  never  pay  any  such 
price  as  that ;  so  he  got  an  Indian  to  saw  up  a  load  of  office 
wood  at  one  dollar  and  a  half.  He  made  out  the  usual 
voucher,  but  signed  no  name  to  it — simply  appended  a  note 
explaining  that  an  Indian  had  done  the  work,  and  had  done 
it  in  a  very  capable  and  satisfactory  way,  but  could  not  sign 
the  voucher  owing  to  lack  of  ability  in  the  necessary  direc 
tion.  The  Secretary  had  to  pay  that  dollar  and  a  half.  He 
thought  the  United  States  would  admire  both  his  economy  and 
his  honesty  in  getting  the  work  done  at  half  price  and  not 
putting  a  pretended  Indian's  signature  to  the  voucher,  but  the 
United  States  did  not  see  it  in  that  light.  The  United  States 
was  too  much  accustomed  to  employing  dollar-and-a-half 


SATISFACTORY  VOUCHER. 


thieves  in  all  manner  of  official  capacities  to  regard  his  expla 
nation  of  the  voucher  as  having  any  foundation  in  fact. 

But  the  next  time  the  Indian  sawed  wood  for  us  I  taught 
him  to  make  a  cross  at  the  bottom  of  the  voucher  —  it  looked 


A    COLLECTION    OF    SOVEREIGNS.  191 

like  a  cross  that  had  been  drunk  a  year — and  then  I  "wit 
nessed  "  it  and  it  went  through  all  right.  The  United  States 
never  said  a  word.  I  was  sorry  I  had  not  made  the  voucher 
for  a  thousand  loads  of  wood  instead  of  one.  The  govern- 


NEEDS    PRAYING    FOR. 


rnent  of  my  country  snubs  honest  simplicity  but  fondles 
artistic  villainy,  and  I  think  I  might  have  developed  into  a 
very  capable  pickpocket  if  I  had  remained  in  the  public 
service  a  year  or  two. 

That  was  a  fine  collection  of  sovereigns,  that  first  Nevada 
legislature.  They  levied  taxes  to  the  amount  of  thirty  or 
forty  thousand  dollars  and  ordered  expenditures  to  the  extent 


192 


ROADS    TO    FORTUNE  — WELL    TOLLED. 


of  about  a  million.  Yet  they  had  their  little  periodical  explo 
sions  of  economy  like  all  other  bodies  of  the  kind.  A  mem 
ber  proposed  to  save  three  dollars  a  day  to  the  nation  by 
dispensing  with  the  Chaplain.  And  yet  that  short-sighted 
man  needed  the  Chaplain  more  than  any  other  member,  per 
haps,  for  he  generally  sat  with  his  feet  on  his  desk,  eating 
raw  turnips,  during  the  morning  prayer. 

The  legislature  sat  sixty  days,  and  passed  private  toll- 
road  franchises  all  the  time.  When  they  adjourned  it  was 
estimated  that  every  citizen  owned  about  three  franchises, 
and  it  was  believed  that  unless  Congress  gave  the  Territory 
another  degree  of  longitude  there  would  not  be  room  enough 
to  accommodate  the  toll-roads.  The  ends  of  them  were 
hanging  over  the  boundary  line  everywhere  like  a  fringe. 


MAP  OF  TOLL-ROADS. 


The  fact  is,  the  freighting  business  had  grown  to  such  im 
portant  proportions  that  there  was  nearly  as  much  excitement 
over  suddenly  acquired  toll-road  fortunes  as  over  the  wonder, 
ful  silver  mines. 


OHAPTEE    XXVI. 

BY  and  by  I  was  smitten  with  the  silver  fever.  "  Prospect 
ing  parties  "  were  leaving  for  the  mountains  every  day. 
and  discovering  and  taking  possession  of  rich  silver-bearing 
lodes  and  ledges  of  quartz.  Plainly  this  was  the  road  to  for 
tune.  The  great  "  Gould  and  Curry  "  mine  was  held  at  three 
or  four  hundred  dollars  a  foot  when  we  arrived ;  but  in  two 
months  it  had  sprung  up  to  eight  hundred.  The  "Ophir" 
had  been  worth  only  a  mere  trifle,  a  year  gone  by,  and  now  it 
was  selling  at  nearly  four  thousand  dollars  a  foot !  Not  a 
mine  could  be  named  that  had  not  experienced  an  astonishing 
advance  in  value  within  a  short  time.  Everybody  was  talking 
about  these  marvels.  Go  where  you  would,  you  heard  nothing 
else,  from  morning  till  far  into  the  night.  Tom  So-and-So  had 
sold  out  of  the  "  Amanda  Smith  "  for  $40,000— hadn't  a  cent 
when  he  "took  up"  the  ledge  six  months  ago.  John  Jones 
had  sold  half  his  interest  in  the  "  Bald  Eagle  and  Mary  Ann  " 
for  $65,000,  gold  coin,  and  gone  to  the  States  for  his  family. 
The  widow  Brewster  had  "  struck  it  rich "  in  the  "  Golden 
Fleece"  and  sold  ten  feet  for  $18,000 — hadn't  money  enough 
to  buy  a  crape  bonnet  when  Sing-Sing  Tommy  killed  her 
husband  at  Baldy  Johnson's  wake  last  spring.  The  "  Last 
Chance"  had  found  a  "clay  casing"  and  knew  they  were 
"  right  on  the  ledge  " — consequence,  "feet"  that  went  begging 
yesterday  were  worth  a  brick  house  apiece  to-day,  and  seedy 
owners  who  could  not  get  trusted  for  a  drink  at  any  bar  in  the 
country  yesterday  were  roaring  drunk  on  champagne  to-day 
13t 


194: 


HO!    FOR    HUMBOLDT. 


and  had  hosts  of  warm  personal  friends  in  a  town  where  they 
had  forgotten  how  to  bow  or  shake  hands  from  long-continued 
want  of  practice.  Johnny  Morgan,  a  common  loafer,  had  gone 
to  sleep  in  the  gutter  and  waked  up  worth  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars,  in  consequence  of  the  decision  in  the  "Lady  Franklin 
and  Rough  and  Ready"  lawsuit.  And  so  on — day  in  and  day 

out  the  talk 
pelted  our 
ears  and  the 
excitement 
waxed  hot 
ter  and  hot 
ter  around 
us. 

I  would 
have  been 
more  or  less 
than  human 
if  I  had  nof 
gone  mad 
like  the  rest. 
Cart-loads  of 
solid  silver 
bricks,  as 

large  as  pigs  of  lead,  were  arriving  from  the  mills  every  day, 
and  such  sights  as  that  gave  substance  to  the  wild  talk  about 
me.  I  succumbed  and  grew  as  frenzied  as  the  craziest. 

Every  few  days  news  would  come  of  the  discovery  of  a 
bran-new  mining  region ;  immediately  the  papers  would  teem 
with  accounts  of  its  richness,  and  away  the  surplus  population 
would  scamper  to  take  possession.  By  the  time  I  was  fairly 
inoculated  with  the  disease,  "  Esmeralda  "  had  just  had  a  run 
and  "Humboldt"  was  beginning  to  shriek  for  attention. 
"  Humboldt !  Humboldt ! "  was  the  new  cry,  and  straightway 
Humboldt,  the  newest  of  the  new,  the  richest  of  the  rich,  the 
most  marvellous  of  the  marvellous  discoveries  in  silver-land, 
was  occupying  two  columns  of  the  public  prints  to  "Esme- 


UNLOADING  SILVER  BRICKS. 


WHAT    MADE    ME    CRAZY.  105 

I  was  just  on  the  point  of  starting  to  Esmeralda, 
but  turned  witli  the  tide  and  got  ready  for  Humboldt.  That 
the  reader  may  see  what  moved  me,  and  what  would  as  surely 
have  moved  him  had  he  been  there,  I  insert  here  one  of  the 
newspaper  letters  of  the  day.  It  and  several  other  letters 
from  the  same  calm  hand  were  the  main  means  of  converting 

O 

me.     I  shall  not  garble  the  extract,  but  put  it  in  just  as  it  ap 
peared  in  the  Daily  Territorial  Enterprise  : 

But  what  about  our  mines  ?  I  shall  be  candid  with  you.  I  shall  express 
an  honest  opinion,  based  upon  a  thorough  examination.  Humboldt  county 
is  the  richest  mineral  region  upon  God's  footstool.  Each  mountain  range  is 
gorged  with  the  precious  ores.  Humboldt  is  the  true  Golconda. 

The  other  day  an  assay  of  mere  croppings  yielded  exceeding  four 
thousand  dollars  to  the  ton.  A  week  or  two  ago  an  assay  of  just  such  sur 
face  developments  made  returns  of  seven  thousand  dollars  to  the  ton.  Our 
mountains  are  full  of  rambling  prospectors.  Each  day  and  almost  every 
hour  reveals  new  and  more  startling  evidences  of  the  profuse  and  intensified 
wealth  of  our  favored  county.  The  metal  is  not  silver  alone.  There  are 
distinct  ledges  of  auriferous  ore.  A  late  discovery  plainly  evinces  cinnabar. 
The  coarser  metals  are  in  gross  abundance.  Lately  evidences  of  bituminous 
coal  have  been  detected.  My  theory  has  ever  been  that  coal  is  a  ligneous  for 
mation.  I  told  Col.  Whitman,  in  times  past,  that  the  neighborhood  of  Dayton 
(Nevada)  betrayed  no  present  or  previous  manifestations  of  a  ligneous  foun 
dation,  and  that  hence  I  had  no  confidence  in  his  lauded  coal  mines.  I 
repeated  the  same  doctrine  to  the  exultant  coal  discoverers  of  Humboldt.  I 
talked  with  my  friend  Captain  Burch  on  the  subject.  My  pyrhanism  van 
ished  upon  his  statement  that  in  the  very  region  referred  to  he  had  seen 
petrified  trees  of  the  length  of  two  hundred  feet.  Then  is  the  fact  estab 
lished  that  huge  forests  once  cast  their  grim  shadows  over  this  remote 
section.  I  am  firm  in  the  coal  faith.  Have  no  fears  of  the  mineral  resources 
of  Humboldt  county.  They  are  immense — incalculable. 

Let  me  state  one  or  two  things  which  will  help  the  reader 
to  better  comprehend  certain  items  in  the  above.  At  this 
time,  our  near  neighbor,  Gold  Hill,  was  the  most  successful 
silver  mining  locality  in  Nevada.  It  was  from  there  that  more 
than  half  the  daily  shipments  of  silver  bricks  came.  "  Very 
rich"  (and  scarce)  Gold  Hill  ore  yielded  from  $100  to  $400 
to  the  ton ;  but  the  usual  yield  was  only  $20  to  $40  per  ton — 
that  is  to  say,  each  hundred  pounds  of  ore  yielded  from  one 
dollar  to  two  dollars.  But  the  reader  will  perceive  by  the 


196 


THE    FINAL    ARGUMENT. 


above  extract,  that  in  Humboldt  from  one  fourth  to  nearly 
half  the  mass  was  silver!  That  is  to  say,  every  one  hun 
dred  pounds 
of  the  ore  had 
from  two  hun 
dred  dollars 
up  to  about 
three  hundred 
and  fifty  in 
it,  Some  days 
later  this  same 
correspondent 
wrote : 

I  have  spoken 
of  the  vast  and 
almost  fabulous 

wealth  of  this  region — it  is  incredible. 
The  intestines  of  our  mountains  are 
gorged  with  precious  ore  to  plethora.  I 
have  said  that  nature  has  so  shaped  our 
mountains  as  to  furnish  most  excellent 
facilities  for  the  working  of  our  mines. 
I  have  also  told  you  that  the  country 
about  here  is  pregnant  with  the  finest 
mill  sites  in  the  world.  But  what  is  the 
mining  history  of  Humboldt  ?  The  Sheba 
mine  is  in  the  hands  of  energetic  San 
Francisco  capitalists.  It  would  seem  that 
the  ore  is  combined  with  metals  that  ren 
der  it  difficult  of  reduction  with  our  im 
perfect  mountain  machinery.  The  proprietors  have  combined  the  capital 
and  labor  hinted  at  in  my  exordium.  They  are  toiling  and  probing.  Their 
tunnel  has  reached  the  length  of  one  hundred  feet.  From  primal  assays 
alone,  coupled  with  the  development  of  the  mine  and  public  confidence  m 
the  continuance  of  effort,  the  stock  had  reared  itself  to  eight  hundred  dollars 
market  value.  I  do  not  know  that  one  ton  of  the  ore  has  been  converted 
into  current  metal.  I  do  know  that  there  are  many  lodes  in  this  section 
that  surpass  the  Sheba  in  primal  assay  value.  Listen  a  moment  to  the  cal 
culations  of  the  Sheba  operators.  They  purpose  transporting  the  ore  con 
centrated  to  Europe.  The  conveyance  from  Star  City  (its  locality)  to  Virginia 
City  will  cost  seventy  dollars  per  ton  ;  from  Virginia  to  San  Francisco,  forty 
dollars  per  ton  ;  from  thence  to  Liverpool,  its  destination,  ten  dollars  per  ton. 
Their  idea  is  that  its  conglomerate  metals  will  reimburse  them  their  cost  of 


VIEW   IN   HUMBOLDT   MOUNTAINS. 


DECIDED    TO    GO.  197 

original  extraction,  the  price  of  transportation,  and  the  expense  of  reduction, 
and  that  then  a  ton  of  the  raw  ore  will  net  them  twelve  hundred  dollars. 
The  estimate  may  be  extravagant.  Cut  it  in  twain,  and  the  product  is  enor 
mous,  far  transcending  any  previous  developments  of  our  racy  Territory. 

A  very  common  calculation  is  that  many  of  our  mines  will  yield  five 
hundred  dollars  to  the  ton.  Such  fecundity  throws  the  Gould  &  Curry,  the 
Ophir  and  the  Mexican,  of  your  neighborhood,  in  the  darkest  shadow.  I 
have  given  you  the  estimate  of  the  value  of  a  single  developed  mine.  Its 
richness  is  indexed  by  its  market  valuation.  The  people  of  Humboldt 
county  are  feet  crazy.  As  I  write,  our  towns  are  near  deserted.  They  look 
as  languid  as  a  consumptive  girl.  What  has  become  of  our  sinewy  and 
athletic  fellow-citizens  ?  They  are  coursing  through  ravines  and  over 
mountain  tops.  Their  tracks  are  visible  in  every  direction.  Occasionally  a 
horseman  will  dash  among  us.  His  steed  betrays  hard  usage.  He  alights 
before  his  adobe  dwelling,  hastily  exchanges  courtesies  with  his  townsmen, 
hurries  to  an  assay  office  and  from  thence  to  the  District  Recorder's.  In  the 
morning,  having  renewed  his  provisional  supplies,  he  is  off  again  on  his 
wild  and  unbeaten  route.  Why,  the  fellow  numbers  already  his  feet  by  the 
thousands.  He  is  the  horse-leech.  He  has  the  craving  stomach  of  the 
shark  or  anaconda.  He  would  conquer  metallic  worlds. 

This  was  enough.  The  instant  we  had  finished  reading 
the  above  article,  four  of  us  decided  to  go  to  Humboldt.  We 
commenced  getting  ready  at  once.  And  we  also  commenced 
upbraiding  ourselves  for  not  deciding  sooner — for  we  were  in 
terror  lest  all  the  rich  mines  would  be  found  and  secured 
before  we  got  there,  and  we  might  have  to  put  up  with  ledges 
that  would  not  yield  more  than  two  or  three  hundred  dollars 
a  ton,  maybe.  An  hour  before,  I  would  have  felt  opulent  if 
I  had  owned  ten  feet  in  a  Gold  Hill  mine  whose  ore  produced 
twenty-five  dollars  to  the  ton ;  now  I  was  already  annoyed  at 
the  prospect  of  having  to  put  up  with  mines  the  poorest  of 
which  would  be  a  marvel  in  Gold  Hill. 


CHAPTER   XXVII. 

TTUKKY,  was  the  word!  "We  wasted  no  time.  Our 
-d  party  consisted  of  four  persons — a  blacksmith  sixty 
years  of  age,  two  young  lawyers,  and  myself.  We  bought  a 
wagon  and  two  miserable  old  horses.  "We  put  eighteen 
hundred  pounds  of  provisions  and  mining  tools  in  the  wagon 
and  drove  out  of  Carson  on  a  chilly  December  afternoon. 
The  horses  were  so  weak  and  old  that  we  soon  found  that  it 
would  be  better  if  one  or  two  of  us  got  out  and  walked.  It 
was  an  improvement.  Next,  we  found  that  it  would  be  better 
if  a  third  man  got  out.  That  was  an  improvement  also.  It 
was  at  this  time  that  I  volunteered  to  drive,  although  I  had 
never  driven  a  harnessed  horse  before  and  many  a  man  in 
such  a  position  would  have  felt  fairly  excused  from  such  a 
responsibility.  But  in  a  little  while  it  was  found  that  it 
would  be  a  fine  thing  if  the  driver  got  out  and  walked  also. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  I  resigned  the  position  of  driver,,  and 
never  resumed  it  again.  "Within  the  hour,  we  found  that  it 
would  not  only  be  better,  but  was  absolutely  necessary,  that 
we  four,  taking  turns,  two  at  a  time,  should  put  our  hands 
against  the  end  of  the  wagon  and  push  it  through  the  sand, 
leaving  the  feeble  horses  little  to  do  but  keep  out  of  the  way 
and  hold  up  the  tongue.  Perhaps  it  is  well  for  one  to  know 
his  fate  at  first,  and  get  reconciled  to  it.  "We  had  learned 
ours  in  one  afternoon.  It  was  plain  that  we  had  to  walk 
through  the  sand  and  shove  that  wagon  and  those  horses  two 
hundred  miles.  So  we  accepted  the  situation,  and  from  that 
time  forth  we  never  rode.  More  than  that,  we  stood  regular 
and  nearly  constant  watches  pushing  up  behind. 


HOW    WE    CONVEYED    OURSELVES    AND    TEAM.     190 

"We  made  seven  miles,  and  camped  in  the  desert.  Young 
Clagett  (now  member  of  Congress  from  Montana)  unharnessed 
and  fed  and  watered  the  horses ;  Oliphant  and  I  cut  sage 
brush,  built  the  fire  and  brought  water  to  cook  with  ;  and  old 
Mr.  Ballou  the  blacksmith  did  the  cooking.  This  division  of 
labor,  and  this  appointment,  was  adhered  to  throughout  the 
journey.  We  had  no  tent,  and  so  we  slept  under  our  blankets 
in  the  open  plain.  We  were  so  tired  that  we  slept  soundly. 

We  were  fifteen  days  making  the  trip — two  hundred 
miles  ;  thirteen,  rather,  for  we  lay  by  a  couple  of  days,  in  one 


GOING  TO    HUMBOLDT. 


place,  to  let  the  horses  rest.  We  could  really  have  accom 
plished  the  journey  in  ten  days  if  we  had  towed  the  horses 
behind  the  wasjon,  but  we  did  not  think  of  that  until  it  was 

O          * 

too  late,  and  so  went  on  shoving  the  horses  and  the  wagon  too 
when  we  might  have  saved  half  the  labor.  Parties  who  met 
us,  occasionally,  advised  us  to  put  the  horses  in  the  wagon, 
but  Mr.  Ballou,  through  whose  iron-clad  earnestness  no  sar 
casm  could  pierce,  said  that  that  would  not  do,  because  the 
provisions  were  exposed  and  Would  suffer,  the  horses  being 
"  bituminous  from  long  deprivation."  The  reader  will  excuse 
me  from  translating.  What  Mr.  Ballou  customarily  meant, 
when  he  used  a  long  word,  was  a  secret  between  himself  and 
his  Maker.  He  was  one  of  the  best  and  kindest  hearted  men 
that  ever  graced  a  humble  sphere  of  life.  He  wras  gentleness 


200      MR.    BALLOU    COMPLAINS    OF   HIS    BEDFELLOW. 

and  simplicity  itself — and  unselfishness,  too.  Although  he  wa& 
more  than  twice  as  old  as  the  eldest  of  us,  he  never  gave  him 
self  any  airs,  privileges,  or  exemptions  on  that  account.  He  did 
a  young  man's  share  of  the  work  ;  and  did  his  share  of  convers 
ing  and  entertaining  from  the  general  stand-point  of  any  age — 
not  from  the  arrogant,  overawing  summit-height  of  sixty  years. 
His  one  striking  peculiarity  was  his  Partingtonian  fashion  of 
loving  and  using  big  words  for  their  own  soikes,  and  inde 
pendent  of  any  bearing  they  might  have  upon  the  thought  he 
was  purposing  to  convey.  He  always  let  his  ponderous  sylla 
bles  fall  with  an  easy  unconsciousness  that  left  them  wholly 
without  oifensiveness.  In  truth  his  air  was  so  natural  and  so 
simple  that  one  was  always  catching  himself  accepting  his 
stately  sentences  as  meaning  something,  when  they  really 
meant  nothing  in  the  world.  If  a  word  was  long  and  grand 
and  resonant,  that  was  sufficient  to  win  the  old  man's  love, 
and  he  would  drop  that  word  into  the  most  out-of-the-way 
place  in  a  sentence  or  a  subject,  and  be  as  pleased  with  it  as 
if  it  were  perfectly  luminous  with  meaning. 

We  four  always  spread  our  common  stock  of  blankets 
together  on  the  frozen  ground,  and  slept  side  by  side ;  and 
finding  that  our  foolish,  long-legged  hound  pup  had  a  deal  of 
animal  heat  in  him,  Oliphant  got  to  admitting  him  to  the  bed, 
between  himself  and  Mr.  Ballou,  hugging  the  dog's  warm 
back  to  his  breast  and  finding  great  comfort  in  it.  But  in  the 
night  the  pup  would  get  stretchy  and  brace  his  feet  against  the 
old  man's  back  and  shove,  grunting  complacently  the  while ; 
and  now  and  then,  being  warm  and  snug,  grateful  and  happy, 
lie  would  paw  the  old  man's  back  simply  in  excess  of  comfort ; 
and  at  yet  other  times  he  would  dream  of  the  chase  and  in 
his  sleep  tug  at  the  old  man's  back  hair  and  bark  in  his  ear. 
The  old  gentleman  complained  mildly  about  these  familiarities, 
at  last,  and  when  he  got  through  with  his  statement  he  said 
that  such  a  dog  as  that  was  not  a  proper  animal  to  admit  to  bed 
with  tired  men,  because  he  was  "  so  meretricious  in  his  move 
ments  and  so  organic  in  his  emotions."  We  turned  the  dog  out. 

It  was  a  hard,  wearing,  toilsome  journey,  but  it  had  its 


PLEASURES    OF    CAMP    LIFE.  201 

bright   side;  for   after   eacli   day  was  done  and   our  wolfish 
hunger  appeased  with  a  hot  supper  of  fried  bacon,  bread,  mo- 


BALLOU'S   BEDFELLOW. 

lasses  and  black  coffee,  the  pipe-smoking,  song-singing  and 
yarn-spinning  around  the  evening  camp-fire  in  the  still  soli 
tudes  of  the  desert  was  a  happy,  care-free  sort  of  recreation 
that  seemed  the  very  summit  and  culmination  of  earthly 
luxury.  It  is  a  kind  of  life  that  has  a  potent  charm  for  all 
men,  whether  city  or  country-bred.  We  are  descended  from 
desert-lounging  Arabs,  and  countless  ages  of  growth  toward 
perfect  civilization  have  failed  to  root  out  of  us  the  nomadic 
instinct.  "We  all  confess  to  a  gratified  thrill  at  the  thought  of 
"  camping  out." 

Once  we  made  twenty-five  miles  in  a  day,  and  once  we 
made  forty  miles  (through  the  Great  American  Desert),  and 
ten  miles  beyond — fifty  in  all — in  twenty-three  hours,  without 
halting  to  eat,  drink  or  rest.  To  stretch  out  and  go  to  sleep, 
even  on  stony  and  frozen  ground,  after  pushing  a  wagon  and 
two  horses  fifty  miles,  is  a  delight  so  supreme  that  for  the 
moment  it  almost  seems  cheap  at  the  price. 

We  camped  two  days  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  "  Sink 
of  the  Humboldt."  We  tried  to  use  the  strong  alkaline  water 
of  the  Sink,  but  it  would  not  answer.  It  was  like  drinking 
lye,  and  not  weak  lye,  either.  It  left  a  taste  in  the  mouth, 


ALKALI  WATER  AS  A  BEVERAGE. 


g  in  the  stomach 


bitter  and  every  way  execrable,  and  a  burnin 
that  was  very  uncomfortable.  We  put  molasses  in  it,  but  that 
helped  it  very  little  ;  we  added  a  pickle,  yet  the  alkali  was  the 
prominent  taste,  and  so  it  was  unfit  for  drinking.  The  coffee 


PLEASURES  OF   CAMPING  OUT. 


made  of  this  water  was 
the  meanest  compound  man 
has  yet  invented.  It  was 
really  viler  to  the  taste  than 
the  unameliorated  water  it 
self.  Mr.  Ballou,  being  the 
architect  and  builder  of  the 
beverage  felt  constrained  to  endorse  and  uphold  it,  and  so 
drank  half  a  cup,  by  little  sips,  making  shift  to  praise  it  faintly 
the  while,  but  finally  threw  out  the  remainder,  and  said  frankly 
it  was  "  too  technical  for  A?'m." 

But  presently  we  found  a  spring  of  fresh  water,  conve 
nient,  and  then,  with  nothing  to  mar  our  enjoyment,  and  no 
stragglers  to  interrupt  it,  we  entered  into  our  rest. 


CHAPTEE   XXVIII. 

AFTEE  leaving  the  Sink,  we  traveled  along  the  Humboldt 
river  a  little  way.  People  accustomed  to  the  monster 
mile-wide  Mississippi,  grow  accustomed  to  associating  the 
term  "river"  with  a  high  degree  of  watery  grandeur. 
Consequently,  such  people  feel  rather  disappointed  when  they 
stand  on  the  shores  of  the  Humboldt  or  the  Carson  and  find 
that  a  "  river "  in  Nevada  is  a  sickly  rivulet  which  is  just 
the  counterpart  of  the  Erie  canal  in  all  respects  save  that* 
the  canal  is  twice  as  long  and  four  times  as  deep.  One  of 
the  pleasantest  and  most  invigorating  exercises  one  can  con 
trive  is  to  run  and  jump  across  the  Humboldt  river  till  he  is 
overheated,  and  then  drink  it  dry. 

On  the  fifteenth  day  we  completed  our  march  of  two 
hundred  miles  and  entered  Unionville,  Humboldt  county,  in 
the  midst  of  a  driving  snow-storm.  Unionville  consisted 
of  eleven  cabins  and  a  liberty-pole.  Six  of  the  cabins  were 
strung  along  one  side  of  a  deep  canyon,  and  the  other  five 
laced  them.  The  rest  of  the  landscape  was  made  up  of  bleak 
mountain  walls  that  rose  so  high  into  the  sky  from  both 
sides  of  the  canyon  that  the  village  was  left,  as  it  were,  far 
down  in  the  bottom  of  a  crevice.  It  was  always  daylight  on 
the  mountain  tops  a  long  time  before  the  darkness  lifted  and 
revealed  Unionville. 

We  built  a  small,  rude  cabin  in  the  side  of  the  crevice  and 
roofed  it  with  canvas,  leaving  a  corner  open  to  serve  as  a 
chimney,  through  which  the  cattle  used  to  tumble  occasionally, 


204  A    PRIVATE    PROSPECTING    TOUR. 

at  night,  and  mash  our  furniture  and  interrupt  our  sleep.  It 
was  very  cold  weather  and  fuel  was  scarce.  Indians  brought 
brush  and  bushes  several  miles  on  their  backs ;  and  when  we 
could  catch  a  laden  Indian  it  was  well — and  when  we  could 
not  (which  was  the  rule,  not  the  exception),  we  shivered  and 
bore  it. 

I  confess,  without  shame,  that  I  expected  to  find  masses 
of  silver  lying  all  about  the  ground.  I  expected  to  see  it 
glittering  in  the  sun  on  the  mountain  summits.  I  said 
nothing  about  this,  for  some  instinct  told  me  that  I 
might  possibly  have  an  exaggerated  idea  about  it,  and  so 
if  I  betrayed  my  thought  I  might  bring  derision  upon 
myself.  Yet  I  was  as  perfectly  satisfied  in  my  own  mind 
as  I  could  be  of  anything,  that  I  was  going  to  gather  up,  in 
a  day  or  two,  or  at  furthest  a  week  or  two,  silver  enough 
to  make  me  satisfactorily  wealthy — and  so  my  fancy  was 
already  busy  with  plans  for  spending  this  money.  The  first 
opportunity  that  offered,  I  sauntered  carelessly  away  from  the 
cabin,  keeping  an  eye  on  the  other  boys,  and  stopping  and 
contemplating  the  sky  when  they  seemed  to  be  observing  me ; 
but  as  soon  as  the  coast  was  manifestly  clear,  I  fled  away  as 
guiltily  as  a  thief  might  have  done  and  never  halted  till  I  was 
far  beyond  sight  and  call.  Then  I  began  my  search  with 
a  feverish  excitement  that  was  brimful  of  expectation — almost 
of  certainty.  I  crawled  about  the  ground,  seizing  and  ex 
amining  bits  of  stone,  blowing  the  dust  from  them  or  rubbing 
them  on  my  clothes,  and  then  peering  at  them  with  anxious 
hope.  Presently  I  found  a  bright  fragment  and  my  heart 
bounded !  I  hid  behind  a  boulder  and  polished  it  and  scruti 
nized  it  with  a  nervous  eagerness  and  a  delight  that  was  more 
pronounced  than  absolute  certainty  itself  could  have  afforded. 
The  more  I  examined  the  fragment  the  more  I  was  convinced 
that  I  had  found  the  door  to  fortune.  I  marked  the  spot  and 
carried  away  my  specimen.  Up  and  down  the  rugged  moun 
tain  side  I  searched,  with  always  increasing  interest  and 
always  augmenting  gratitude  that  I  had  come  to  Humboldt 
and  come  in  time.  Of  all  the  experiences  of  my  life,  this 


FINDING    MY    FIRST    GOLD    MINE. 


205 


secret  search  among  the  hidden  treasures  of  silver-land  wag 
the  nearest  to  unmarred  ecstasy.  It  was  a  delirious  revel. 
By  and  by,  in  the  bed  of  a  shallow  rivulet,  I  found  a  de 
posit  of  shining 
yellow  scales,and 
my  breath  almost 
forsook  me!  A 
gold  mine,  and 
in  my  simplicity 
I  had  been  con 
tent  with  vulgar 


silver !  I  was  so 
excited  that  I 
half  believed  my 
overwrought  im 
agination  was  de 
ceiving  me.  Then 
a  fear  came  upon 
me  that  people 
might  be  observ 
ing  me  and  would 
guess  my  secret. 

Moved  by  this  thought,  I  made  a  circuit  of  the  place,  and 
ascended  a  knoll  to  reconnoiter.  Solitude.  No  creature  was 
near.  Then  I  returned  to  my  mine,  fortifying  myself  against 
possible  disappointment,  but  my  fears  were  groundless — the 
shining  scales  were  still  there.  I  set  about  scooping  them  out, 
and  for  an  hour  I  toiled  down  the  windings  of  the  stream 
and  robbed  its  bed.  But  at  last  the  descending  sun  warned 
me  to  give  up  the  quest,  and  I  turned  homeward  laden  with 
wealth.  As  I  walked  along  I  could  not  help  smiling  at  the 
thought  of  my  being  so  excited  over  my  fragment  of  silver 
when  a  nobler  metal  was  almost  under  my  nose.  In  this  little 
time  the  former  had  so  fallen  in  my  estimation  that  once  or 
twice  I  was  on  the  point  of  throwing  it  away. 

The  boys  were  as  hungry  as  usual,  but  I  could  eat  nothing. 
Neither  could  I  talk.     I  was  full  of  dreams  and  far  away. 


THE  SECRET  SEAJRCH. 


206       FILTERING    THE    NEWS    TO    MY    COMPANIONS. 

Their  conversation  interrupted  the  now  of  my  fancy  some 
what,  and  annoyed  me  a  little,  too.  I  despised  the  sordid  and 
commonplace  things  they  talked  about.  But  as  they  proceeded, 
it  began  to  amuse  me.  It  grew  to  be  rare  fun  to  hear  them 
planning  their  poor  little  economies  and  sighing  over  possible 
privations  and  distresses  when  a  gold  mine,  all  our  own,  lay 
within  sight  of  the  cabin  and  I  could  point  it  out  at  any 
moment.  Smothered  hilarity  began  to  oppress  me,  presently. 
It  was  hard  to  resist  the  impulse  to  burst  out  with  exultation 
and  reveal  everything;  but  I  did  resist.  I  said  within  myself 
that  I  would  filter  the  great  news  through  my  lips  calmly  and 
be  serene  as  a  summer  morning  while  I  watched  its  effect  in 
their  faces.  I  said : 

"  Where  have  you  all  been  ? " 

"  Prospecting." 

"What  did  you  find?" 

"  Nothing." 

"  Nothing  ?     What  do  you  think  of  the  country  ? " 

"Can't  tell,  yet,"  said  Mr.  Ballou,  who  was  an  old  gold 
miner,  and  had  likewise  had  considerable  experience  among 
the  silver  mines. 

"  Well,  haven't  you  formed  any  sort  of  opinion  ? " 

"  Yes,  a  sort  of  a  one.  It's  fair  enough  here,  may  be,  but 
overrated.  Seven  thousand  dollar  ledges  are  scarce,  though. 
That  Sheba  may  be  rich  enough,  but  we  don't  own  it ;  and 
besides,  the  rock  is  so  full  of  base  metals  that  all  the  science 
in  the  world  can't  work  it.  We'll  not  starve,  here,  but  we'll 
not  get  rich,  I'm  afraid." 

"  So  you  think  the  prospect  is  pretty  poor  ?  " 

"  No  name  for  it !  " 

"  Well,  we'd  better  go  back,  hadn't  we  ?  " 

"  Oh,  not  yet— of  course  not.    We'll  try  it  a  riffle,  first." 

"  Suppose,  now — this  is  merely  a  supposition,  you  know — 
suppose  you  could  find  a  ledge  that  would  yield,  say,  a 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  ton — would  that  satisfy  you  I  " 

"  Try  us  once !  "  from  the  whole  party. 

"  Or  suppose — merely  a  supposition,  of  course — suppose 


BALLOU    BECOMES    EXCITED. 


207 


you  were  to  find  a  ledge  that  would  yield  two  thousand 
dollars  a  ton — would  that  satisfy  you  ? " 

"  Here — what  do  you  mean  ?  What  are  you  coming  at  ? 
Is  there  some  mystery  behind  all  this  ? " 

"Never  mind.  I  am  not  saying  anything.  You  know 
perfectly  well  there  are  no  rich  mines  here — of  course  you  do. 
Because  you  have  been  around  and  examined  for  yourselves. 
Anybody  would  know  that,  that  had  been  around.  But 
just  for  the  sake  of  argument,  suppose — in  a  kind  of  general 
way — suppose  some  person  were  to  tell  you  that  two-thousand- 
dollar  ledges  were  simply  contemptible — contemptible,  under 
stand — and  that  right  yonder  in  sight  of  this  very  cabin  there 
were  piles  of  pure  gold  and  pure  silver — oceans  of  it — enough 
to  make  you  all  rich  in  twenty-four  hours !  Come !  " 


CAST   YOUR  EYE   ON   THAT  ! 


"  I  should  say  he  was  as  crazy  as  a  loon  !  "  said  old  Ballon, 
but  wild  with  excitement,  nevertheless. 

"  Gentlemen,"  said  I,  "  I  don't  say  anything—/  haven't 


208  PRICKING    THE    BUBBLE. 

been  around,  you  know,  and  of  course  don't  know  anything— 
but  all  I  ask  of  you  is  to  cast  your  eye  on  that,  for  instance; 
and  tell  me  what  you  think  of  it !  "  and  I  tossed  my  treasure 
before  them. 

There  was  an  eager  scramble  for  it,  and  a  closing  of  heads 
together  over  it  under  the  candle-light.  Then  old  Ballou 
said: 

"  Think  of  it  ?  I  think  it  is  nothing  but  a  lot  of  granite 
rubbish  and  nasty  glittering  mica  that  isn't  worth  ten  cents 
an  acre ! " 

So  vanished  my  dream.  So  melted  my  wealth  away.  So 
toppled  my  airy  castle  to  the  earth  and  left  me  stricken  and 
forlorn. 

Moralizing,  I  observed,  then,  that  "  all  that  glitters  is  not 
gold." 

Mr.  Ballou  said  I  could  go  further  than  that,  and  lay  it 
up  among  my  treasures  of  knowledge,  that  nothing  that  glit 
ters  is  gold.  So  I  learned  then,  once  for  all,  that  gold  in  its 
native  state  is  but  dull,  unornamental  stuff,  and  that  only  low 
born  metals  excite  the  admiration  of  the  ignorant  with  an 
ostentatious  glitter.  However,  like  the  rest  of  the  world,  I 
still  go  on  underrating  men  of  gold  and  glorifying  men  of 
mica.  Commonplace  human  nature  cannot  rise  above  that. 


OHAPTEE   XXIX. 

TRUE  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  silver  mining  came  fast 
enough.  We  went  out  "  prospecting  "  with  Mr.  Ballon. 
We  climbed  the  mountain  sides,  and  clambered  among  sage 
brush,  rocks  and  snow  till  we  were  ready  to  drop  with  exhaus 
tion,  but  found  no  silver — nor  yet  any  gold.  Day  after  day  we 
did  this.  Now  and  then  we  came  upon  holes  burrowed  a  few 
feet  into  the  declivities  and  apparently  abandoned ;  and  now 
and  then  we  found  one  or  two  listless  men  still  burrowing. 
But  there  was  no  appearance  of  silver.  These  holes  were  the 
beginnings  of  tunnels,  and  the  purpose  was  to  drive  them  hun 
dreds  of  feet  into  the  mountain,  and  some  day  tap  the  hidden 
ledge  where  the  silver,  was.  Some  day !  It  seemed  far  enough 
away,  and  very  hopeless  and  dreary.  Day  after  day  we  toiled, 
and  climbed  and  searched,  and  we  younger  partners  grew 
sicker  and  still  sicker  of  the  promiseless  toil.  At  last  we 
halted  under  a  beetling  rampart  of  rock  which  projected  from 
the  earth  high  upon  the  mountain.  Mr.  Ballon  broke  off  some 
fragments  with  a  hammer,  and  examined  them  long  and  atten 
tively  with  a  small  eye-glass ;  threw  them  away  and  broke  off 
more ;  said  this  rock  was  quartz,  and  quartz  was  the  sort  of 
rock  that  contained  silver.  Contained  it!  I  had  thought 
that  at  least  it  would  be  caked  on  the  outside  of  it  like  a  kind 
of  veneering.  He  still  broke  off  pieces  and  critically  examined 
them,  now  and  then  wetting  the  piece  with  his  tongue  and 
applying  the  glass.  At  last  he  exclaimed : 

i*t 


210 


MR.    BALLOU'S    DISCOVERY. 


"We've  got  it!" 

We  were  full  of  anxiety  in  a  moment.  The  rock  was 
clean  and  white,  where  it  was  broken,  and  across  it  ran  a 
ragged  thread  of  blue.  He  said  that  that  little  thread  had 

silver  in  it,mixed 

Vwith  base  metals, 
(11.  ^HW\\  such  as  lead  and 
antimony,  and 
other  rubbish, 
and  that  there 
was  a  speck  or 
two  of  gold  visi 
ble.  After  a 
great  deal  of  ef 
fort  we  managed 
to  discern  some 
little  fine  yellow 
specks,  and 
judged  that  a 
couple  of  tons 
of  them  massed 
together  might 
make  a  gold 
dollar,  possibly. 
We  were  not  ju 
bilant,  but  Mr. 
Ballon,  said  there 
"  WE'VE  GOT  IT  : "  were  worse  ledg 

es  in  the  world 

than  that.  He  saved  what  he  called  the  "  richest "  piece  of 
the  rock,  in  order  to  determine  its  value  by  the  process  called 
the  "fire-assay."  Then  we  named  the  mine  "Monarch  of 
the  Mountains"  (modesty  of  nomenclature  is  not  a  prominent 
feature  in  the  mines),  and  Mr.  Ballou  wrote  out  and  stuck  up 
the  following  "notice,"  preserving  a  copy  to  be  entered  upon 
the  books  in  the  mining  recorder's  office  in  the  town. 


A    SILVER    MINE    AT    LAST.  211 

"  NOTICE." 

"  We  the  undersigned  claim  three  claims,  of  three  hundred  feet  each 
[and  one  for  discovery),  on  this  silver-bearing  quartz  lead  or  lode,  extending 
north  and  south  from  this  notice,  with  all  its  dips,  spurs,  and  angles,  varia 
tions  and  sinuosities,  together  with  fifty  feet  of  ground  on  either  side  for 
working  the  game." 

We  put  our  names  to  it  and  tried  to  feel  that  our  fortunes  were 
made.  But  when  we  talked  the  matter  all  over  with  Mr.  Ballou, 
we  felt  depressed  and  dubious.  He  said  that  this  surface  quartz 
was  not  all  there  was  of  our  mine ;  but  that  the  wall  or  ledge  of 
rock  called  the  "  Monarch  of  the  Mountains,"  extended  down 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  feet  into  the  earth — he  illustrated  by 
saying  it  was  like  a  curb-stone,  and  maintained  a  nearly  uniform 
thickness — say  twenty  feet — away  down  into  the  bowels  of  the 
earth,  and  was  perfectly  distinct  from  the  casing  rock  on  each 
side  of  it ;  and  that  it  kept  to  itself,  and  maintained  its  distinct 
ive  character  always,  no  matter  how  deep  it  extended  into  the 
earth  or  how  far  it  stretched  itself  through  and  across  the  hills 
and  valleys.  He  said  it  might  be  a  mile  deep  and  ten  miles  long, 
for  all  we  knew ;  and  that  wherever  we  bored  into  it  above 
ground  or  below,  we  would  find  gold  and  silver  in  it,  but  no 
gold  or  silver  in  the  meaner  rock  it  was  cased  between.  And 
he  said  that  down  in  the  great  depths  of  the  ledge  was  its  rich 
ness,  and  the  deeper  it  went  the  richer  it  grew.  Therefore, 
instead  of  working  here  on  the  surface,  we  must  either  bore 
down  into  the  rock  with  a  shaft  till  wre  came  to  where  it  was 
rich — say  a  hundred  feet  or  so — or  else  we  must  go  down  into 
the  valley  and  bore  a  long  tunnel  into  the  mountain  side  and 
tap  the  ledge  far  under  the  earth.  To  do  either  was  plainly 
the  labor  of  months ;  for  we  could  blast  and  bore  only  a  few 
feet  a  day — some  five  or  six.  But  this  was  not  all.  He  said 
that  after  we  got  the  ore  out  it  must  be  hauled  in  wragons  to  a 
distant  silver-mill,  ground  up,  and  the  silver  extracted  by  a 
tedious  and  costly  process.  Our  fortune  seemed  a  century 
away ! 

But  we  went  to  work.  We  decided  to  sink  a  shaft.  So, 
for  a  week  we  climbed  the  mountain,  laden  with  picks,  drills, 


212 


ON    THE    ROAD    TO    FORTUNE. 


gads,  crowbars,  shovels,  cans  of  blasting  powder  and  coils  of 
fuse  and  strove  with  might  and  main.  At  first  the  rock  was 
broken  and  loose  and  we  dug  it  up  with  picks  and  threw  it  out 
with  shovels,  and  the  hole  progressed  very  well.  But  the  rock 
became  more  compact,  presently,  and  gads  and  crowbars  came 
into  play.  But  shortly  nothing  could  make  an  impression  but 
blasting  powder.  That  was  the  weariest  work !  One  of  us 
held  the  iron  drill  in  its  place  and  another  would  strike  with 
an  eight-pound  sledge — it  was  like  driving  nails  on  a  large 
scale.  In  the  course  of  an  hour  or  two  the  drill  would  reach 


INCIPIENT   MILLIONAIRES. 


a  depth   of  two  or  three  feet,  making  a  hole  a  couple  oi 
inches  in  diameter.     We  would  put  in  a  charge  of  powder,  in- 


WE    FIND    IT    HARD    TO    TRAVEL.  213 

sert  half  a  yard  of  fuse,  pour  in  sand  and  gravel  and  rain  it 
down,  then  light  the  fuse  and  run.,  When  the  explosion  came 
and  the  rocks  and  smoke  shot  into  the  air,  we  would  go  back 
and  find  about  a  bushel  of  that  hard,  rebellious  quartz  jolted 
out.  ^Nothing  more.  One  week  of  this  satisfied  me.  I  re 
signed.  Clagget  and  Oliphant  followed.  Our  shaft  was  only 
twelve  feet  deep.  We  decided  that  a  tunnel  was  the  thing 
we  wanted. 

So  we  went  down  the  mountain  side  and  worked  a  week ; 
at  the  end  of  which  time  we  had  blasted  a  tunnel  about  deep 
enough  to  hide  a  hogshead  in,  and  judged  that  about  nine 
hundred  feet  more  of  it  would  reach  the  ledge.  I  resigned 
again,  and  the  other  boys  only  held  out  one  day  longer.  We 
decided  that  a  tunnel  was  not  what  we  wanted.  We  wanted 
a  ledge  that  was  already  "  developed."  There  were  none  in 
the  camp. 

We  dropped  the  "  Monarch  "  for  the  time  being. 

Meantime  the  camp  was  filling  up  with  people,  and  there 
was  a  constantly  growing  excitement  about  our  Humboldt 
mines.  We  fell  victims  to  the  epidemic  and  strained  every 
nerve  to  acquire  more  "  feet."  We  prospected  and  took  up 
new  claims,  put "  notices  "  on  them  and  gave  them  grandiloquent 
names.  We  traded  some  of  our  "  feet "  for  "  feet "  in  other 
people's  claims.  In  a  little  while  we  owned  largely  in  the 
" Gray  Eagle,"  the  « Golumbiana,"  the  "Branch  Mint,"  the 
" Maria  Jane,"  the  "Universe,"  the  " Koot-Hog-or-Die,"  the 
"  Samson  and  Delilah,"  the  "  Treasure  Trove,"  the  "  Golconda," 
the  "  Sultana,"  the  «  Boomerang,"  the  "  Great  Eepublic,"  the 
"  Grand  Mogul,"  and  fifty  other  "  mines  "  that  had  never  been 
molested  by  a  shovel  or  scratched  with  a  pick.  We  had  not  less 
than  thirty  thousand  "  feet "  apiece  in  the  "  richest  mines  on 
earth  "  as  the  frenzied  cant  phrased  it — and  were  in  debt  to 
the  butcher.  We  were  stark  mad  with  excitement — drunk 
with  happiness — smothered  under  mountains  of  prospective 
wealth — arrogantly  compassionate  toward  the  plodding  millions 
who  knew  not  our  marvellous  canyon — but  our  credit  was  not 
good  at  the  grocer's. 


214 


POCKETS    FULL    OF    ROCKS. 


It  was  the  strangest  phase  of  life  one  can  imagine.  It  was 
a  beggars'  revel.  There  was  nothing  doing  in  the  district — 
no  mining — no  milling — no  productive  effort — no  income — 
and  not  enough  money  in  the  entire  camp  to  buy  a  corner 
lot  in  an  eastern  village,  hardly ;  and  yet  a  stranger  would 
have  supposed  he  was  walking  among  bloated  millionaires. 
Prospecting  parties  swarmed  out  of  town  with  the  first  flush 
of  dawn,  and  swarmed  in  again  at  nightfall  laden  with  spoil — • 
rocks.  Nothing  but  rocks.  Every  man's  pockets  were  full  of 
them ;  the  floor  of  his  cabin  was  littered  with  them ;  they 
were  disposed  in  labeled  rows  on  his  shelves. 


CHAPTEE    XXX. 

I  MET  men  at  every  turn  who  owned  from  one  thousand  to 
thirty  thousand  "feet"  in  undeveloped  silver  mines, 
every  single  foot  of  which  they  believed  would  shortly  be 
worth  from  fifty  to  a  thousand  dollars — and  as  often  as  any 
other  way  they  were  men  who  had  not  twenty-five  dollars  in 
the  world.  Every  man  you  met  had  his  new  mine  to  boast 
of,  and  his  "  specimens  "  ready ;  and  if  the  opportunity  offered, 
he  would  infallibly  back  you  into  a  corner  and  offer  as  a  favor 
to  you,  not  to  him,  to  part  with  just  a  few  feet  in  the  "  Golden 
Age,"  or  the  "  Sarah  Jane,"  or  some  other  unknown  stack  of 
croppings,  for  money  enough  to  get  a  "  square  meal "  with,  as 
the  phrase  went.  And  you  were  never  to  reveal  that  he  had 
made  you  the  offer  at  such  a  ruinous  price,  for  it  was  only  out 
of  friendship  for  you  that  he  was  willing  to  make  the  sacrifice. 
Then  he  would  fish  a  piece  of  rock  out  of  his  pocket,  and 
after  looking  mysteriously  around  as  if  he  feared  he  might  be 
waylaid  and  robbed  if  caught  with  such  wealth  in  his  posses 
sion,  he  would  dab  the  rock  against  his  tongue,  clap  an  eye 
glass  to  it,  and  exclaim  : 

"Look  at  that!  Right  there  in  that  red  dirt!  See  it? 
See  the  specks  of  gold  ?  And  the  streak  of  silver  ?  That's 
from  the  '  Uncle  Abe.'  There's  a  hundred  thousand  tons  like 
that  in  sight !  Right  in  sight,  mind  you  !  And  when  we  get 
down  on  it  and  the  ledge  comes  in  solid,  it  will  be  the  richest 
thing  in  the  world !  Look  at  the  assay !  I  don't  want  you  to 
believe  me — look  at  the  assay  !  " 


216 


HOW    "FEET"    WERE    SOLD. 


Then  he  would  get  out  a  greasy  sheet  of  paper  which 
showed  that  the  portion  of  rock  assayed  had  given  evidence 
of  containing  silver  and  gold  in  the  proportion  of  so  many 

hundreds  or 
thousands  of  dol 
lars  to  the  ton. 
I  little  knew, 
then,  that  the 
custom  was  to 
hunt  out  the 
richest  piece  of 
rock  and  get  it 
assayed!  Very 
often,  that  piece, 
the  size  of  a  fil 
bert,  was  the  only 
fragment  in  a  ton 
that  had  a  particle 
of  metal  in  it  — 
and  yet  the  assay 
made  it  pretend 
to  represent  the 
average  value  of 
the  ton  of  rub 


DO   YOU   SEE   IT 


bish  it  came  from  ! 

On  such  a  system  of  assaying  as  that,  the  Humboldt 
world  had  gone  crazy.  On  the  authority  of  such  assays  its 
newspaper  correspondents  were  frothing  about  rock  worth 
four  and  seven  thousand  dollars  a  ton  ! 

And  does  the  reader  remember,  a  few  pages  back,  the  cal 
culations,  of  a  quoted  correspondent,  whereby  the  ore  is  to  be 
mined  and  shipped  all  the  way  to  England,  the  metals  ex 
tracted,  and  the  gold  and  silver  contents  received  back  by  the 
miners  as  clear  profit,  the  copper,  antimony  and  other  things 
in  the  ore  being  sufficient  to  pay  all  the  expenses  incurred  ? 
Everybody's  head  was  full  of  such  "calculations"  as  those  — 
such  raving  insanity,  rather.  Few  people  took  work  into  their 


A    PILGRIMAGE    TO    ESMERALDA.  217 

calculations — or  outlay  of  money  either;  except  the  work 
and  expenditures  of  other  people. 

We  never  touched  our  tunnel  or  our  shaft  again.  "Why  ? 
Because  we  judged  that  we  had  learned  the  real  secret  of 
success  in  silver  mining — which  was,  not  to  mine  the  silver 
ourselves  by  the  sweat  of  our  brows  and  the  labor  of  our  hands, 
but  to  sell  the  ledges  to  the  dull  slaves  of  toil  and  let  them  do 
the  mining ! 

Before  leaving  Carson,  the  Secretary  and  I  had  purchased 
"feet"  from  various  Esmeralda  stragglers.  We  had  expected 
immediate  returns  of  bullion,  but  were  only  afflicted  with 
regular  and  constant  "assessments"  instead — demands  for 
money  wherewith  to  develop  the  said  mines.  These  assess 
ments  had  grown  so  oppressive  that  it  seemed  necessary  to 
look  into  the  matter  personally.  Therefore  I  projected  a  pil 
grimage  to  Carson  and  thence  to  Esmeralda.  I  bought  a 
horse  and  started,  in  company  with  Mr.  Ballou  and  a  gentle 
man  named  Ollendorff,  a  Prussian — not  the  party  who  has 
inflicted  so  much  suffering  on  the  world  with  his  wretched 
foreign  grammars,  with  their  interminable  repetitions  of  ques 
tions  which  never  have  occurred  and  are  never  likely  to  occur 
in  any  conversation  among  human  beings.  We  rode  through 
a  snow-storm  for  two  or  three  days,  and  arrived  at  "  Honey 
Lake  Smith's,"  a  sort  of  isolated  inn  on  the  Carson  river.  It 
was  a  two-story  log  house  situated  on  a  small  knoll  in  the 
midst  of  the  vast  basin  or  desert  through  which  the  sickly 
Carson  winds  its  melancholy  way.  Close  to  the  house  were 
the  Overland  stage  stables,  built  of  sun-dried  bricks.  There 
was  not  another  building  within  several  leagues  of  the  place. 
Towards  sunset  about  twenty  hay-wagons  arrived  and  camped 
around  the  house  and  all  the  teamsters  came  in  to  supper — a 
very,  very  rough  set.  There  were  one  or  two  Overland  stage 
drivers  there,  also,  and  half  a  dozen  vagabonds  and  stragglers ; 
consequently  the  house  was  well  crowded. 

We  walked  out,  after  supper,  and  visited  a  small  Indian 
camp  in  the  vicinity.  The  Indians  were  in  a  great  hurry 
abort  something,  and  were  packing  up  and  getting  away  as 


218 


AN    INDIAN    PROPHESY. 


FAREWELL   SWEET   RIVER. 


fast  as  they  could.  In  their  broken  English  they  said,  "  By'n> 
by,  heap  water ! "  and  by  the  help  of  signs  made  us  under 
stand  that  in  their  opinion  a  flood  was  coming.  The  weather 
was  perfectly  clear,  and  this  was  not  the  rainy  season.  There 
was  about  a  foot  of  water  in  the  insignificant  river — or  maybe 
two  feet ;  the  stream  was  not  wider  than  a  back  alley  in  a 

village,  and  its 
banks  w  e  r  e 
scarcely  higher 
than  a  man's 
head.  So,  where 
was  the  flood 
to  come  from? 
We  canvassed 
the  subject  a- 
while  and  then 
concluded  it 
was  a  ruse,  and 
that  the  Indians 

had  some  better  reason  for  leaving  in  a  hurry  than  fears  of  a 
flood  in  such  an  exceedingly  dry  time. 

At  seven  in  the  evening  we  went  to  bed  in  the  second 
story — with  our  clothes  on,  as  usual,  and  all  three  in  the  same 
bed,  for  every  available  space  on  the  floors,  chairs,  etc.,  was  in 
request,  and  even  then  there  was  barely  room  for  the  housing 
of  the  inn's  guests.  An  hour  later  we  were  awakened  by  a 
great  turmoil,  and  springing  out  of  bed  we  picked  our  wray 
nimbly  among  the  ranks  of  snoring  teamsters  on  the  floor  and 
got  to  the  front  windows  of  the  long  room.  A  glance  revealed 
a  strange  spectacle,  under  the  moonlight.  The  crooked  Carson 
was  full  to  the  brim,  and  its  waters  were  raging  and  foaming 
in  the  wildest  way— sweeping  around  the  sharp  bends  at  a 
furious  speed,  and  bearing  on  their  surface  a  chaos  of  logs, 
brush  and  all  sorts  of  rubbish.  A  depression,  where  its  bed 
had  once  been,  in  other  times,  was  already  filling,  and  in 
one  or  two  places  the  water  was  beginning  to  wash  over  the 
main  bank.  Men  were  flying  hither  and  thither,  bringing 


UNEXPECTED    RISE    OF    WATER. 


219 


cattle  and  wagons  close  up  to  the  house,  for  the  spot  of  high 
ground  on  which  it  stood  extended  only  some  thirty  feet  in 
front  and  about  a  hundred  in  the  rear.  Close  to  the  old  river 
bed  just  spoken  of,  stood  a  little  log  stable,  and  in  this  our 


horses  were  lodged. 


While  we  looked,  the 
waters  increased  so  fast 
in  this  place  that  in  a 
few  minutes  a  torrent 
was  roaring  by  the  little 
stable  and  its  margin 
encroaching  steadily  on 
the  logs.  We  suddenly 
realized  that  this  flood 
was  not  a  mere  holiday  spectacle,  but  meant  damage — and  not 
only  to  the  small  log  stable  but  to  the  Overland  buildings 
close  to  the  main  river,  for  the  waves  had  now  come  ashore 
and  were  creeping  about  the  foundations  and  invading  the 


THE   RESCUE. 


220      OUR  QUARTERS  AFTER  THE  FLOOD. 

great  hay-corral  adjoining.  We  ran  down  and  joined  the 
crowd  of  excited  men  and  frightened  animals.  We  t  waded 
knee-deep  into  the  log  stable,  unfastened  the  horses  and 
waded  out  almost  waist-deep,  so  fast  the  waters  increased. 
Then  the  crowd  rushed  in  a  body  to  the  hay-corral  and  began 
to  tumble  down  the  huge  stacks  of  baled  hay  and  roll  the 
bales  up  on  the  high  ground  by  the  house.  Meantime  it  was 
discovered  that  Owens,  an  overland  driver,  was  missing,  and  a 
man  ran  to  the  large  stable,  and  wading  in,  boot-top  deep, 
discovered  him  asleep  in  his  bed,  awoke  him,  and  waded  out 
again.  But  Owens  was  drowsy  and  resumed  his  nap ;  but 
only  for  a  minute  or  two,  for  presently  he  turned  in  his  bed, 
his  hand  dropped  over  the  side  and  came  in  contact  with  the 
cold  water  !  It  was  up  level  with  the  mattrass  !  He  waded 
out,  breast-deep,  almost,  and  the  next  moment  the  sun-burned 
bricks  melted  down  like  sugar  and  the  big  building  crumbled 
to  a  ruin  and  was  washed  away  in  a  twinkling. 

At  eleven  o'clock  only  the  roof  of  the  little  log  stable  was 
out  of  water,  and  our  inn  was  on  an  island  in  mid-ocean.  As 
far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  in  the  moonlight,  there  was  no 
desert  visible,  but  only  a  level  waste  of  shining  water.  The 
Indians  were  true  prophets,  but  how  did  they  get  their  in 
formation  ?  I  am  not  able  to  answer  the  question. 

We  remained  cooped  up  eight  days  and  nights  with  that 
curious  crew.  Swearing,  drinking  and  card  playing  were  the 
order  of  the  day,  and  occasionally  a  fight  was  thrown  in  for 
variety.  Dirt  and  vermin — but  let  us  forget  those  features ; 
their  profusion  is  simply  inconceivable — it  is  better  that  they 
remain  so. 

There  were  two  men — however,  this  chapter  is  long  enough. 


OHAPTEE   XXXI. 

r  I  ^HERE  were  two  men  in  the  company  who  caused  me  partic- 
-J-  ular  discomfort.  One  was  a  little  Swede,  about  twenty-five 
years  old,  who  knew  only  one  song,  and  he  was  forever  singing 
it.  By  day  we  were  all  crowded  into  one  small,  stifling  bar 
room,  and  so  there  was  no  escaping  this  person's  music.  Through 
all  the  profanity,  whisky-guzzling,  "  old  sledge  "  and  quarrel 
ing,  his  monotonous  song  meandered  with  never  a  variation  in 
its  tiresome  sameness,  and  it  seemed  to  me,  at  last,  that  I 
would  be  content  to  die,  in  order  to  be  rid  of  the  torture.  The 
other  man  was  a  stalwart  ruffian  called  "  Arkansas,"  who  car 
ried  two  revolvers  in  his  belt  and  a  bowie  knife  projecting  from 
his  boot,  and  who  was  always  drunk  and  always  suffering  for 
a  fight.  But  he  was  so  feared,  that  nobody  would  accommo 
date  him.  He  would  try  all  manner  of  little  wary  ruses 
to  entrap  somebody  into  an  offensive  remark,  and  his  face 
would  light  up  now  and  then  when  he  fancied  he  was  fairly 
on  the  scent  of  a  fight,  but  invariably  his  victim  would  elude 
his  toils  and  then  he  would  show  a  disappointment  that  was 
almost  pathetic.  The  landlord,  Johnson,  was  a  meek,  well- 
meaning  fellow,  and  Arkansas  fastened  on  him  early,  as  a 
promising  subject,  and  gave  him  no  rest  day  or  night,  for 
awhile,  On  the  fourth  morning,  Arkansas  got  drunk  and  sat 
himself  down  to  wait  for  an  opportunity.  Presently  Johnson 
came  in,  just  comfortably  sociable  with  whisky,  and  said : 
"  I  reckon  the  Pennsylvania  'lection — " 
Arkansas  raised  his  finger  impressively  and  Johnson  stopped. 
Arkansas  rose  unsteadily  and  confronted  him.  Said  he  : 


222 


NEW    CHARACTERS. 


"  Wha-what  do  you  know  a-abont  Pennsylvania  ?     Answer 
me  that.     Wha-what  do  you  know  'bont  Pennsylvania  ? " 
"  I  was  only  goin'  to  say — " 

"  You  was  only  goin'  to  say.  You  was !  You  was  only 
goin'  to  B&y—what  was  you  goin'  to  say  ?  That's  it !  That's 
what  /  want  to  know.  /  want  to  know  wha-what  you  (ic) 

what  you  know  about  Pennsyl 
vania,  since  you're  makin'  your 
self  so  d — d  free.  Answer  me 
that!" 

"  Mr.  Arkansas,  if  you'd  only 
let  me—" 

"Who's  a  henderin'  you? 
Don't  you  insinuate  nothing 
agin  me ! — don't  you  do  it. 
Don't  you  come  in  here  bullyin' 
around,  and  cussin'  and  goin'  on 
like  a  lunatic — don't  you  do  it. 
'Coz  /  won't  stand  it.  If  fight's 
what  you  want,  out  with  it !  I'm 
your  man  !  Out  with  it !  " 

Said  Johnson,  backing  into 
a  corner,  Arkansas  following, 
menacingly : 

"  Why,  /  never  said  nothing, 
Mr.  Arkansas.  You  don't  give 
a  man  no  chance.  I  was  only 
goin'  to  say  that  Pennsylvania 
was  goin'  to  have  an  election 
next  week — that  was  all — that 
was  everything  I  was  goin'  to 
say — I  wish  I  may  never  stir  if  it  wasn't." 

"  Well  then  why  d'n't  you  say  it  ?  What  did  you  come 
swellin'  around  that  way  for,  and  tryin'  to  raise  trouble? " 

"Why  /didn't  come  swellin'  around,  Mr.  Arkansas — I 
just—" 

"  I'm  a  liar  am  I !     Ger-reat  Caesar's  ghost — " 


MK.    ARKANSAS. 


BULLY    OLD    ARKANSAS.  223 

"  Oh,  please,  Mr.  Arkansas,  I  never  meant  such  a  thing  as 
that,  I  wish  I  may  die  if  I  did.  All  the  boys  will  tell  you 
that  I've  always  spoke  well  of  you,  and  respected  you  more'n 
any  man  in  the  house.  Ask  Smith.  Ain't  it  so,  Smith  ?  Didn't 
I  say,  no  longer  ago  than  last  night,  that  for  a  man  that  was  a 
gentleman  all  the  time  and  every  way  you  took  him,  give  me 
Arkansas  ?  I'll  leave  it  to  any  gentleman  here  if  them  warn't 
the  very  words  I  used.  Come,  now,  Mr.  Arkansas,  le's  take 
a  drink — le's  shake  hands  and  take  a  drink.  Come  up — every 
body!  It's  my  treat.  Come  up,  Bill,  Tom,  Bob,  Scotty — 
come  up.  I  want  you  all  to  take  a  drink  with  me  and  Arkan 
sas — old  Arkansas,  I  call  him — bully  old  Arkansas.  Gimme 
your  hand  agin.  Look  at  him,  boys — just  take  a  look  at  him. 
Thar  stands  the  whitest  man  in  America ! — and  the  man  that 
denies  it  has  got  to  fight  me,  that's  all.  Gimme  that  old 
flipper  agin ! " 

They  embraced,  with  drunken  affection  on  the  landlord's 
part  and  unresponsive  toleration  on  the  part  of  Arkansas, 
who,  bribed  by  a  drink,  was  disappointed  of  his  prey  once 
more.  But  the  foolish  landlord  was  so  happy  to  have  escaped 
butchery,  that  he  wrent  on  talking  when  he  ought  to  have 
marched  himself  out  of  danger.  The  consequence  was  that 
Arkansas  shortly  began  to  glower  upon  him  dangerously, 
and  presently  said : 

"Lan'lord,  will  you  p-please  make  that  remark  over  agin^ 
if  you  please?" 

"  I  was  a-sayin'  to  Scotty  that  my  father  was  up'ards  of 
eighty  year  old  when  he  died." 

"  Was  that  all  that  you  said  ? " 

"  Yes,  that  was  all." 

"  Didn't  say  nothing  but  that? " 

«  No— nothing." 

Then  an  uncomfortable  silence. 

Arkansas  played  with  his  glass  a  moment,  lolling  on  his 
elbows  on  the  counter.  Then  he  meditatively  scratched  his 
left  shin  with  his  right  boot,  while  the  awkward  silence  con 
tinued.  But  presently  he  loafed  away  toward  the  stove, 


224  BOUND    FOR    A    FIGHT. 

looking  dissatisfied ;  roughly  shouldered  two  or  three  men 
out  of  a  comfortable  position;  occupied  it  himself,  gave  a 
sleeping  dog  a  kick  that  sent  him  howling  under  a  bench, 
then  spread  his  long  legs  and  his  blanket-coat  tails  apart 
and  proceeded  to  warm  his  back.  In  a  little  while  he  fell  to 
grumbling  to  himself,  and  soon  he  slouched  back  to  the  bar 
and  said : 

"  Lan'lord,  what's  your  idea  for  rakin'  up  old  personalities 
and  blowin'  about  your  father  ?  Ain't  this  company  agreeable 
to  you  ?  Ain't  it  ?  If  this  company  ain't  agreeable  to  you, 
p'r'aps  we'd  better  leave.  Is  that  your  idea?  Is  that  what 
you're  coming  at  ? " 

"  "Why  bless  your  soul,  Arkansas,  I  warn't  thinking  of  such 
a  thing.  My  father  and  my  mother — " 

"  Lan'lord,  don't  crowd  a  man !  Don't  do  it.  If  nothing'll 
do  you  but  a  disturbance,  out  with  it  like  a  man  (?ic) — but 
don't  rake  up  old  bygones  and  fling  'em  in  the  teeth  of  a  passel 
of  people  that  wants  to  be  peaceable  if  they  could  git  a  chance. 
"What's  the  matter  with  you  this  mornin',  anyway  ?  I  never 
see  a  man  carry  on  so." 

"  Arkansas,  I  reely  didn't  mean  no  harm,  and  I  won't  go 
on  with  it  if  it's  onpleasant  to  you.  I  reckon  my  licker's  got 
into  my  head,  and  what  with  the  flood,  and  havin'  so  many 
to  feed  and  look  out  for — 

"  So  that's  what's  a-ranklin'  in  your  heart,  is  it  1  You  want 
us  to  leave  do  you  ?  There's  too  many  on  us.  You  want  us 
to  pack  up  and  swim.  Is  that  it  ?  Come ! " 

"  Please  be  reasonable,  Arkansas.  Now  you  know  that  I 
ain't  the  man  to — " 

"  Are  you  a  threatenin'  me  ?  Are  you  ?  By  George,  the 
man  don't  live  that  can  skeer  me !  Don't  you  try  to  come 
that  game,  my  chicken — 'cuz  I  can  stand  a  good  deal,  but  I 
won't  stand  that.  Come  out  from  behind  that  bar  till  I  clean 
you !  You  want  to  drive  us  out,  do  you,  you  sneakin'  under 
handed  hound  !  Come  out  from  behind  that  bar !  Pll  learn 
you  to  bully  and  badger  and  browbeat  a  gentleman  that's 
forever  trying  to  befriend  you  and  keep  you  out  of  trouble  ! " 


A    BLOODLESS    AFFRAY. 


225 


"  Please,  Arkansas,  please  don't  shoot !  If  there's  got  to 
be  bloodshed — " 

"  Do  you  hear  that,  gentlemen  ?  Do  you  hear  him  talk 
about  bloodshed?  So  it's  blood  you  want,  is  it,  you  ravin* 
desperado !  You'd  made  up  your  mind  to  murder  somebody 
this  mornin' — I  knowed  it  perfectly  well.  I'm  the  man,  am 
I?  It's  me  you're  goin'  to  murder,  is  it?  But  you  can't  do 
it  'thout  I  get  one  chance  first,  you  thievin'  black-hearted, 
white-livered  son  of  a  nigger  !  Draw  your  weepon !  " 


AN   ARMED   ALLY. 


With  that,  Arkansas  began  to  shoot,  and  the  landlord  to 
clamber  over  benches,  men  and  every  sort  of  obstacle  in  a 
frantic  desire  to  escape.  In  the  midst  of  the  wild  hubbub  the 
landlord  crashed  through  a  glass  door,  and  as  Arkansas  charged 
after  him  the  landlord's  wife  suddenly  appeared  in  the  door- 


226  THE    FLOOD    SUBSIDES. 

way  and  confronted  the  desperado  with  a  pair  of  scissors !  Her 
fury  was  magnificent.  With  head  erect  and  flashing  eye  she 
stood  a  moment  and  then  advanced,  with  her  weapon  raised. 
The  astonished  ruffian  hesitated,  and  then  fell  back  a  step. 
She  followed.  She  backed  him  step  by  step  into  the  middle 
of  the  bar-room,  and  then,  while  the  wondering  crowd  closed 
up  and  gazed,  she  gave  him  such  another  tongue-lashing  as 
never  a  cowed  and  shamefaced  braggart  got  before,  perhaps ! 
As  she  finished  and  retired  victorious,  a  roar  of  applause  shook 
the  house,  and  every  man  ordered  "  drinks  for  the  crowd  "  in 
one  and  the  same  breath. 

The  lesson  was  entirely  sufficient.  The  reign  of  terror  was 
over,  and  the  Arkansas  domination  broken  for  good.  During 
the  rest  of  the  season  of  island  captivity,  there  was  one  man 
who  sat  apart  in  a  state  of  permanent  humiliation,  never  mix 
ing  in  any  quarrel  or  uttering  a  boast,  and  never  resenting  the 
insults  the  once  cringing  crew  now  constantly  leveled  at  him, 
and  that  man  was  "  Arkansas." 

By  the  fifth  or  sixth  morning  the  waters  had  subsided  from 
the  land,  but  the  stream  in  the  old  river  bed  was  still  high  and 
swift  and  there  was  no  possibility  of  crossing  it.  On  the  eighth 
it  was  still  too  high  for  an  entirely  safe  passage,  but  life  in  the 
,  inn  had  become  next  to  insupportable  by  reason  of  the  dirt, 
1  drunkenness,  fighting,  etc.,  and  so  we  made  an  effort  to  get 
away.  In  the  midst  of  a  heavy  snow-storm  we  embarked  in  a 
canoe,  taking  our  saddles  aboard  and  towing  our  horses  after  us 
by  their  halters.  The  Prussian,  Ollendorff,  was  in  the  bow,  with 
a  paddle,  Ballou  paddled  in  the  middle,  and  I  sat  in  the  stern 
holding  the  halters.  When  the  horses  lost  their  footing  and 
began  to  swim,  Ollendorff  got  frightened,  for  there  was  great 
danger  that  the  horses  would  make  our  aim  uncertain,  and  it 
was  plain  that  if  we  failed  to  land  at  a  certain  spot  the  current 
would  throw  us  off  and  almost  surely  cast  us  into  the  main 
Carson,  which  was  a  boiling  torrent,  now.  Such  a  catastrophe 
would  be  death,  in  all  probability,  for  we  would  be  swept  to 
sea  in  the  "  Sink  "  or  overturned  and  drowned.  We  warned 
Ollendorff  to  keep  his  wits  about  him  and  handle  himself  care- 


ANOTHER    DISASTER. 


227 


fully,  but  it  was  useless ;  the  moment  the  bow  touched  the 
bank,  he  made  a  spring  and  the  canoe  whirled  upside  down  in 


CROSSING  THE  FLOOD. 


ten-foot  water.  Ollendorff  seized  some  brush  and  dragged 
himself  ashore,  but  Ballou  and  I  had  to  swim  for  it,  encum 
bered  with  our  overcoats.  But  we  held  on  to  the  canoe,  and 
although  we  were  washed  down  nearly  to  the  Carson,  we  man 
aged  to  push  the  boat  ashore  and  make  a  safe  landing.  We 
were  cold  and  water-soaked,  but  safe.  The  horses  made  a 
landing,  too,  but  our  saddles  were  gone,  of  course.  We  tied 
the  animals  in  the  sage-brush  and  there  they  had  to  stay  for 
twenty-four  hours.  We  baled  out  the  canoe  and  ferried  over 
some  food  and  blankets  for  them,  but  we  slept  one  more  night 
in  the  inn  before  making  another  venture  on  our  journey. 
The  next  morning  it  was  still  snowing  furiously  when  we 


228  A    NEW    START    FOR    CARSON. 

got  away  with  our  new  stock  of  saddles  and  accoutrements. 
We  mounted  and  started.  The  snow  lay  so  deep  on  the 
ground  that  there  was  no  sign  of  a  road  perceptible,  and  the 
snow-fall  was  so  thick  that  we  could  not  see  more  than  a  hun 
dred  yards  ahead,  else  we  could  have  guided  our  course  by  the 
mountain  ranges.  The  case  looked  dubious,  but  Ollendorff 
said  his  instinct  was  as  sensitive  as  any  compass,  and  that  he 
could  "  strike  a  bee-line  "  for  Carson  city  and  never  diverge 
from  it.  He  said  that  if  he  were  to  straggle  a  single  point  out 
of  the  true  line  his  instinct  would  assail  him  like  an  outraged 
conscience.  Consequently  we  dropped  into  his  wake  happy 
and  content.  For  half  an  hour  we  poked  along  warily  enough, 
but  at  the  end  of  that  time  we  came  upon  a  fresh  trail,  and 
Ollendorff  shouted  proudly: 

u  I  knew  I  was  as  dead  certain  as  a  compass,  boys !  Here 
we  are,  right  in  somebody's  tracks  that  will  hunt  the  way  for 
us  without  any  trouble.  Let's  hurry  up  and  join  company  with 
the  party." 

So  we  put  the  horses  into  as  much  of  a  trot  as  the  deep 
snow  would  allow,  and  before  long  it  was  evident  that  we 
were  gaining  on  our  predecessors,  for  the  tracks  grew  more 
distinct.  We  hurried  along,  and  at  the  end  of  an  hour  the 
tracks  looked  still  newer  and  fresher — but  what  surprised  us 
was,  that  the  number  of  travelers  in  advance  of  us  seemed  to 
steadily  increase.  We  wondered  how  so  large  a  party  came  to 
be  traveling  at  such  a  time  and  in  such  a  solitude.  Somebody 
suggested  that  it  must  be  a  company  of  soldiers  from  the  fort, 
and  so  we  accepted  that  solution  and  jogged  along  a  little  faster 
still,  for  they  could  not  be  far  off  now.  But  the  tracks  still 
multiplied,  and  we  began  to  think  the  platoon  of  soldiers  was 
miraculously  expanding  into  a  regiment — Ballou  said  they  had 
already  increased  to  five  hundred !  Presently  he  stopped  his 
horse  and  said : 

"  Boys,  these  are  our  own  tracks,  and  we've  actually  been 
circussing  round  and  round  in  a  circle  for  more  than  two 
hours,  out  here  in  this  blind  desert !  By  George  this  is  per 
fectly  hydraulic ! " 


RAPID    TRAVEL    BUT    NO     ADVANCE. 


229 


Then  the  old  man  waxed  wroth  and  abusive.  He  called 
OllendoriF  all  manner  of  hard  names — said  he  never  saw 
such  a  lurid  fool  as  he  was,  and  ended  with  the  peculiarly 
venomous  opinion  that  he  "did  not  know  as  much  as  a 
logary  thin ! " 

We  certainly  had  been  following  our  own  tracks.     Ollen- 


ADTANCE  IX  A  CIRCLE. 


dorif  and  his  "  mental  compass "  were  in  disgrace  from  that 
moment.  After  all  our  hard  travel,  here  we  were  on  the  bank 
of  the  stream  again,  with  the  inn  be}rond  dimly  outlined 
through  the  driving  snow-fall.  While  we  were  considering 
what  to  do,  the  young  Swede  landed  from  the  canoe  and  took 
his  pedestrian  way  Carson-wards,  singing  his  same  tiresome 
song  about  his  "sister  and  his  brother"  and  "the  child  in 
the  grave  with  its  mother,"  and  in  a  short  minute  faded  and 
disappeared  in  the  white  oblivion.  He  was  never  heard  of 


230 


A    SAFE    LEADER    AT    LAST. 


THE   SONGSTER. 


again.  He  no  doubt  got  bewildered  and  lost,  and  Fatigue 
delivered  him  over  to  Sleep  and  Sleep  betrayed  him  to  Death. 
Possibly  he  followed  our  treacherous  tracks  till  he  became  ex 
hausted  and  dropped. 

Presently  the  Overland  stage 
forded  the  now  fast  receding  stream 
and  started  toward  Carson  on  its 
first  trip  since  the  flood  came.  We 
hesitated  no  longer,  now,  but  took 
up  our  march  in  its  wake,  and  trot 
ted  merrily  along,  for  we  had  good 
confidence  in  the  driver's  bump  of 
locality.  But  our  horses  were  no 
match  for  the  fresh  stage  team.  We 
were  soon  left  out  of  sight ;  but  it 

was  no  matter,  for  we  had  the  deep  ruts  the  wheels  made  for 
a  guide.  By  this  time  it  was  three  in  the  afternoon,  and  con 
sequently  it  was  not  very  long  before  night  came — and  not 
with  a  lingering  twilight,  but  with  a  sudden  shutting  down 
like  a  cellar  door,  as  is  its  habit  in  that  country.  The  snow 
fall  was  still  as  thick  as  ever,  and  of  course  we  could  not  see 
fifteen  steps  before  us ;  but  all  about  us  the  white  glare  of  the 
snow-bed  enabled  us  to  discern  the  smooth  sugar-loaf  mounds 
made  by  the  covered  sage-bushes,  and  just  in  front  of  us  the 
two  faint  grooves  which  we  knew  were  the  steadily  filling 
and  slowly  disappearing  wheel-tracks. 

Now  those  sage-bushes  were  all  about  the  same  height — • 
three  or  four  feet ;  they  stood  just  about  seven  feet  apart,  all 
over  the  vast  desert ;  each  of  them  was  a  mere  snow-mound, 
now ;  in  any  direction  that  you  proceeded  (the  same  as  in  a 
well  laid  out  orchard)  you  would  find  yourself  moving  down 
a  distinctly  defined  avenue,  with  a  row  of  these  snow-mounds 
an  either  side  of  it — an  avenue  the  customary  width  of  a  road, 
nice  and  level  in  its  breadth,  and  rising  at  the  sides  in  the 
most  natural  way,  by  reason  of  the  mounds.  But  we  had  not 
thought  of  this.  Then  imagine  the  chilly  thrill  that  shot 
through  us  when  it  finally  occurred  to  us,  far  in  the  night, 


REALIZATION    OF    UNPLEASANT    FACTS. 


231 


that  since  the  last  faint  trace  of  the  wheel-tracks  had  long  ago 
been  buried  from  sight,  we  might  now  be  wandering  down  a 
mere  sage-brush  avenue,  miles  away  from  the  road  and  diverg 
ing  further  and  further  away  from  it  all  the  time.  Having  a 
cake  of  ice  slipped  down  one's  back  is  placid  comfort  compared 
to  it.  There  was  a  sudden  leap  and  stir  of  blood  that  had 
been  asleep  for  an  hour,  and  as  sudden  a  rousing  of  all  the 
drowsing  activities  in  our  minds  and  bodies.  We  were  alive 
and  awake  at  once — and  shaking  and  quaking  with  consterna 
tion,  too.  There  was  an  instant  halting  and  dismounting,  a 
bending  low  and  an  anxious  scanning  of  the  road-bed.  Use 
less,  of  course  ;  for  if  a  faint  depression  could  not  be  discerned 
from  an  altitude  of  four  or  five  feet  above  it,  it  certainly  could 
not  with  one's  nose  nearly  against  it. 


OHAPTEE    XXXII. 

~TTT"E  seemed  to  be  in  a  road,  but  that  was  no  proof.  "We 
'  V  tested  tins  by  walking  off  in  various  directions — the 
regular  snow-mounds  and  the  regular  avenues  between  them 
convinced  each  man  that  lie  had  found  the  true  road,  and  that 
the  others  had  found  only  false  ones.  Plainly  the  situation 
was  desperate.  We  were  cold  and  stiff  and  the  horses  were 
tired.  We  decided  to  build  a  sage-brush  fire  and  camp  out  till 
morning.  This  was  wise,  because  if  we  were  wandering  from 
the  right  road  and  the  snow-storrn  continued  another  day  our 
case  would  be  the  next  thing  to  hopeless  if  we  kept  on. 

All  agreed  that  a  camp  fire  was  what  would  come  nearest 
to  saving  us,  now,  and  so  we  set  about  building  it.  We 
could  find  no  matches,  and  so  we  tried  to  make  shift  with  the 
pistols.  Not  a  man  in  the  party  had  ever  tried  to  do  such  a 
thing  before,  but  not  a  man  in  the  party  doubted  that  it  could 
be  done,  and  without  any  trouble — because  every  man  in  the 
party  had  read  about  it  in  books  many  a  time  and  had  naturally 
come  to  believe  it,  with  trusting  simplicity,  just  as  he  had 
]ong  ago  accepted  and  believed  that  other  common  book-fraud 
about  Indians  and  lost  hunters  making  a  fire  by  rubbing  two 
dry  sticks  together. 

We  huddled  together  on  our  knees  in  the  deep  snow, 
and  the  horses  put  their  noses  together  and  bowed  their 
patient  heads  over  us ;  and  while  the  feathery  flakes  eddied 
down  and  turned  us  into  a  group  of  white  statuary,  we  pro 
ceeded  with  the  momentous  experiment.  We  broke  twigs 


LOST    IN    THE    SNOW    WITHOUT    FIRE    OR    HORSES.    233 

from  a  sage  bush  and  piled  them  on  a  little  cleared  place 
in  the  shelter  of  our  bodies.  In  the  course  of  ten  or  fifteen 
minutes  all  was  ready,  and  then,  while  conversation  ceased 
and  our  pulses  beat  low  with  anxious  suspense,  Ollendorff 
applied  his  revolver,  pulled  the  trigger  and  blew  the  pile 
clear  out  of  the  county !  It  was  the  flattest  failure  that  ever 
was. 

This  was  distressing,  but  it  paled  before  a  greater  horror — 


A  FLAT  FAILURE. 


the  horses  were  gone!  I  had  been  appointed  to  hold  the 
bridles,  but  in  my  absorbing  anxiety  over  the  pistol  experi 
ment  I  had  unconsciously  dropped  them  and  the  released 
animals  had  walked  off  in  the  storm.  It  was  useless  to  try  to 
follow  them,  for  their  footfalls  could  make  no  sound,  and  one 
could  pass  within  two  yards  of  the  creatures  and  never  see 
them.  We  gave  them  up  without  an  effort  at  recovering 
them,  and  cursed  the  lying  books  that  said  horses  would  stay 


234 


VAIN    ATTEMPTS    FOR    A    FIRE. 


by  their  masters  for  protection  and  companionship  in  a  distress 
ful  time  like  ours. 

We  were  miserable  enough,  before ;  we  felt  still  more 
forlorn,  now.  Patiently,  but  with  blighted  hope,  we  broke 
more  sticks  and  piled  them,  and  once  more  the  Prussian  shot 
them  into  annihilation.  Plainly,  to  light  a  fire  with  a  pistol 
was  an  art  requiring  practice  and  experience,  and  the  middle 
of  a  desert  at  midnight  in  a  snow-storm  was  not  a  good 
place  or  time  for  the  acquiring  of  the  accomplishment.  We 
gave  it  up  and  tried  the  other.  Each  man  took  a  couple  of 
sticks  and  fell  to  chafing  them  together.  At  the  end  of  half 
an  hour  we  were  thoroughly  chilled,  and  so  were  the  sticks, 
We  bitterly  execrated  the  Indians,  the  hunters  and  the  books 
that  had  betrayed  us  with  the  silly  device,  and  wondered  dis 
mally  what  was  next  to  be  done.  At  this  critical  moment 
Mr.  Ballon  fished  out  four  matches  from  the  rubbish  of  an 
overlooked  pocket.  To  have  found  four  gold  bars  would  have 
seemed  poor  and  'cheap  good  luck  compared  to  this.  One 

cannot  think  how 
good  a  match  looks 
under  such  cir 
cumstances — or 
how  lovable  and 
precious,  and  sa 
credly  beautiful  to 
the  eye.  This  time 
we  gathered  sticks 
with  high  hopes; 
and  when  Mr.  Bal- 
lou  prepared  to 
light  the  first 
match,  there  was 

THE  LAST  MATCH.  „     . 

an  amount  of  in 
terest  centred  upon  him  that  pages  of  writing  could  not 
describe.  The  match  burned  hopefully  a  moment,  and  then 
went  out.  It  could  not  have  carried  more  regret  with  it  if  it 
had  been  a  human  life.  The  next  match  simply  flashed  and 


COMPARISON    OF    OUR    THOUGHTS.  235 

died.  The  wind  puffed  the  third  one  out  just  as  it  was  on 
the  imminent  verge  of  success.  We  gathered  together  closer 
than  ever,  and  developed  a  solicitude  that  was  rapt  and  pain 
ful,  as  Mr.  Ballou  scratched  our  last  hope  on  his  leg.  It  lit, 
burned  blue  and  sickly,  and  then  budded  into  a  robust  flame. 
Shading  it  with  his  hands,  the  old  gentleman  bent  gradually 
down  and  every  heart  went  with  him — everybody,  too,  for  that 
matter — and  blood  and  breath  stood  still.  The  flame  touched 
the  sticks  at  last,  took  gradual  hold  upon  them — hesitated— 
took  a  stronger  hold — hesitated  again — held  its  breath  five 
heart-breaking  seconds,  then  gave  a  sort  of  human  gasp  and 
went  out. 

Nobody  said  a  word  for  several  minutes.  It  was  a  solemn 
sort  of  silence  :  even  the  wind  put  on  a  stealthy,  sinister  quiet, 
and  made  no  more  noise  than  the  falling  flakes  of  snow. 
Finally  a  sad-voiced  conversation  began,  and  it  was  soon 
apparent  that  in  each  of  our  hearts  lay  the  conviction  that  this 
was  our  last  night  with  the  living.  I  had  so  hoped  that  I  was 
the  only  one  who  felt  so.  "When  the  others  calmly  acknowl 
edged  their  conviction,  it  sounded  like  the  summons  itself. 

O  ' 

Ollendorff  said: 

"  Brothers,  let  us  die  together.  And  let  us  go  without  one 
hard  feeling  towards  each  other.  Let  us  forget  and  forgive 
bygones.  I  know  that  you  have  felt  hard  towards  me  for  turn 
ing  over  the  canoe,  and  for  knowing  too  much  and  leading  you 
round  and  round  in  the  snow — but  I  meant  well ;  forgive  me. 
I  acknowledge  freely  that  I  have  had  hard  feelings  against  Mr. 
Ballou  for  abusing  me  and  calling  me  a  logarythm,  which  is  a 
thing  I  do  not  know  what,  but  no  doubt  a  thing  considered 
disgraceful  and  unbecoming  in  America,  and  it  has  scarcely 
been  out  of  my  mind  and  has  hurt  me  a  great  deal — but  let 
it  go ;  I  forgive  Mr.  Ballou  with  all  my  heart,  and — 

Poor  Ollendorff  broke  down  and  the  tears  came.  He  was 
not  alone,  for  I  was  crying  too,  and  so  wras  Mr.  Ballou. 
Ollendorff  got  his  voice  again  and  forgave  me  for  things  I  had 
done  and  said.  Then  he  got  out  his  bottle  of  whisky  and  said 
that  whether  he  lived  or  died  he  would  never  touch  another 


236  WE    MOURN    OVER    OUR    EVIL    LIVES. 

drop.  He  said  he  had  given  up  all  hope  of  life,  and  although 
ill-prepared,  was  ready  to  submit  humbly  to  his  fate ;  that  he 
wished  he  could  be  spared  a  little  longer,  not  for  any  seliish 
reason,  but  to  make  a  thorough  reform  in  his  character,  and  by 
devoting  himself  to  helping  the  poor,  nursing  the  sick,  and 
pleading  with  the  people  to  guard  themselves  against  the 
evils  of  intemperance,  make  his  life  a  beneficent  example  to 
the  young,  and  lay  it  down  at  last  with  the  precious  reflection 
that  it  had  not  been  lived  in  vain.  He  ended  by  saying  that 
his  reform  should  begin  at  this  moment,  even  here  in  the 
presence  of  death,  since  no  longer  time  was  to  be  vouchsafed 
wherein  to  prosecute  it  to  men's  help  and  benefit — and  with 
that  he  threw  away  the  bottle  of  whisky. 

Mr.  Ballou  made  remarks  of  similar  purport,  and  began 
the  reform  he  could  not  live  to  continue,  by  throwing  away 
the  ancient  pack  of  cards  that  had  solaced  our  captivity  during 
the  flood  and  made  it  bearable.  He  said  he  never  gambled,  but 
still  was  satisfied  that  the  meddling  with  cards  in  any  way  was 

immoral  and  injurious,  and  no 
man  could  be  wholly  pure  and 
blemishless  without  eschew- 
ing  them.  "  And  therefore," 
continued  he,  "  in  doing  this 
act  I  already  feel  more  in 
sympathy  with  that  spiritual 
saturnalia  necessary  to  entire 
and  obsolete  reform."  These 

VICES.  rolling  syllables  touched  him 

as  no  intelligible   eloquence 

could  have  done,  and  the  old  man  sobbed  with  a  mournful- 
ness  not  unmingled  with  satisfaction. 

My  own  remarks  were  of  the  same  tenor  as  those  of 
my  comrades,  and  I  know  that  the  feelings  that  prompted 
them  were  heartfelt  and  sincere.  We  were  all  sincere, 
and  all  deeply  moved  and  earnest,  for  we  were  in  the  pres 
ence  of  death  and  without  hope.  I  threw  away  my  pipe, 
and  in  doing  it  felt  that  at  last  I  was  free  of  a  hated  vice 


APPARENTLY    THE    END. 


237 


and  one  that  had  ridden  me  like  a  tyrant  all  my  days.  While 
I  yet  talked,  the  thought  of  the  good  I  might  have  done  in 
the  world  and  the  still  greater  good  I  might  now  do,  with 
these  new  incentives  and  higher  and  better  aims  to  guide  me 
if  I  could  only  be  spared  a  few  years  longer,  overcame  me 
and  the  tears  came  again.  We  put  our  arms  about  each 
other's  necks  and  awaited  the  warning  drowsiness  that  pre 
cedes  death  by  freezing. 

It  came  stealing  over  us  presently,  and  then  we  bade  each 
other  a  last  farewell.  A  delicious  dreaminess  wrought  its  web 
about  my  yielding  senses,  while  the  snow-flakes  wove  a  wind 
ing  sheet  about  my  conquered  body.  Oblivion  came.  The 
battle  of  life  was  done. 


CHAPTEE   XXXIII. 

I  DO  not  know  how  long  I  was  in  a  state  of  forgetfulness, 
but  it  seemed  an  age.  A  vague  consciousness  grew  upon 
me  by  degrees,  and  then  came  a  gathering  anguish  of  pain  in 
my  limbs  and  through  all  my  body.  I  shuddered.  The  thought 
flitted  through  my  brain,  "  this  is  death — this  is  the  hereafter." 

Then  came  a  white  upheaval  at  my  side,  and  a  voice  said, 
with  bitterness : 

""Will  some  gentleman  be  so  good  as  to  kick  me  behind?" 

It  was  Ballou — at  least  it  was  a  towzled  snow  image  in  a 
sitting  posture,  with  Ballou's  voice. 

I  rose  up,  and  there  in  the  gray  dawn,  not  fifteen  steps 
from  us,  were  the  frame  buildings  of  a  stage  station,  and  under 
a  shed  stood  our  still  saddled  and  bridled  horses ! 

An  arched  snow-drift  broke  up,  now,  and  Ollendorff 
emerged  from  it,  and  the  three  of  us  sat  and  stared  at  the 
houses  without  speaking  a  word.  We  really  had  nothing  to 
say.  We  were  like  the  profane  man  who  could  not  "do  the 
subject  justice,"  the  whole  situation  was  so  painfully  ridiculous 
and  humiliating  that  words  were  tame  and  we  did  not  know 
where  to  commence  anyhow. 

The  joy  in  our  hearts  at  our  deliverance  was  poisoned; 
well-nigh  dissipated,  indeed.  We  presently  began  to  grow 
pettish  by  degrees,  and  sullen ;  and  then,  angry  at  each  other, 
angry  at  ourselves,  angry  at  everything  in  general,  we  moodily 
dusted  the  snow  from  our  clothing  and  in  unsociable  single 
file  plowed  our  way  to  the  horses,  unsaddled  them,  and  sought 
shelter  in  the  station. 

I  have  scarcely  exaggerated  a  detail  of  this  curious  and 


FRUITS    OF    OUR    REFORM.  239 

absurd  adventure.  It  occurred  almost  exactly  as  I  have  stated 
it.  We  actually  went  into  camp  in  a  snow-drift  in  a  desert,  at 
midnight  in  a  storm,  forlorn  and  hopeless,  within  fifteen  steps 
of  a  comfortable  inn. 

For  two  hours  we  sat  apart  in  the  station  and  ruminated  in 
disgust.  The  mystery  was  gone,  now,  and  it  wras  plain  enough 
why  the  horses  had  deserted  us.  Without  a  doubt  they  were 
under  that  shed  a  quarter  of  a  minute  after  they  had  left  us, 
and  they  must  have  overheard  and  enjoyed  all  our  confessions 
and  lamentations. 

"After  breakfast  we  felt  better,  and  the  zest  of  life  soon 
came  back.  The  world  looked  bright  again,  and  existence 
was  as  dear  to  us  as  ever.  Presently  an  uneasiness  came  over 
me — grew  upon  me — assailed  me  without  ceasing.  Alas,  my 
regeneration  was  not  complete — I  wanted  to  smoke !  I  re 
sisted  with  all  my  strength,  but  the  flesh  was  weak.  I  wan 
dered  away  alone  and  wrestled  with  myself  an  hour.  I 
recalled  my  promises  of  reform  and  preached  to  myself 
persuasively,  upbraidingly,  exhaustively.  But  it  was  all  vain, 
I  shortly  found  myself  sneaking  among  the  snow-drifts  hunt 
ing  for  my  pipe.  I  discovered  it  after  a  considerable  search, 
and  crept  away  to  hide  myself  and  enjoy  it.  I  remained 
behind  the  barn  a  good  while,  asking  myself  how  I  would 
feel  if  my  braver,  stronger,  truer  comrades  should  catch  me  in 
my  degradation.  At  last  I  lit  the  pipe,  and  no  human  being 
can  feel  meaner  and  baser  than  I  did  then.  I  was  ashamed 
of  being  in  my  own  pitiful  company.  Still  dreading  discovery, 
I  felt  that  perhaps  the  further  side  of  the  barn  would  be  some 
what  safer,  and  so  I  turned  the  corner.  As  I  turned  the  one 
corner,  smoking,  Ollendorif  turned  the  other  with  his  bottle 
to  his  lips,  and  between  us  sat  unconscious  Ballou  deep  in 
a  game  of  "  solitaire  "  with  the  old  greasy  cards  ! 

Absurdity  could  go  no  farther.  We  shook  hands  and 
agreed  to  say  no  more  about  "  reform  "  and  "  examples  to  the 
rising  generation." 

The  station  we  were  at  was  at  the  verge  of  the  Twenty-six- 
Mile  Desert.  If  we  had  approached  it  half  an  hour  earlier 


24:0     CARSON,  AND  WHAT  WE  SAW  THERE. 

the  night  before,  we  must  have  heard  men  shouting  there  and 
firing  pistols ;  for  they  were  expecting  some  sheep  drovers 


IT  WAS  THUS  WE    MET. 


and  their  flocks  and  knew  that  they  would  infallibly  get  lost 
and  wander  out  of  reach  of  help  unless  guided  by  sounds. 
While  we  remained  at  the  station,  three  of  the  drovers  arrived, 
nearly  exhausted  with  their  wanderings,  but  two  others  of 
their  party  were  never  heard  of  afterward. 

We  reached  Carson  in  due  time,  and  took  a  rest.  This 
rest,  together  with  preparations  for  the  journey  to  Esmeralda, 
kept  us  there  a  week,  and  the  delay  gave  us  the  opportunity 
to  be  present  at  the  trial  of  the  great  land-slide  case  of  Hyde 
vs.  Morgan — an  episode  which  is  famous  in  Nevada  to  this 
day.  After  a  word  or  two  of  necessary  explanation,  I  will  set 
down  the  history  of  this  singular  aifair  just  as  it  transpired. 


CHAPTER    XXXIV. 

mountains  are  very  high  and  steep  about  Carson, 
Eagle  and  AYashoe  Yalleys — very  high  and  very  steep, 
and  so  when  the  snow  gets  to  melting  off  fast  in  the  Spring 
and  the  warm  surface-earth  begins  to  moisten  and  soften,  the 
disastrous  land-slides  commence.  The  reader  cannot  know 
what  a  land-slide  is,  unless  he  has  lived  in  that  country  and 
seen  the  whole  side  of  a  mountain  taken  off  some  fine  morning 
and  deposited  down  in  the  valley,  leaving  a  vast,  treeless, 
unsightly  scar  upon  the  mountain's  front  to  keep  the  circum 
stance  fresh  in  his  memory  all  the  years  that  he  may  go  on 
lining  within  seventy  miles  of  that  place. 

General  Buncombe  was  shipped  out  to  Nevada  in  the 
invoice  of  Territorial  officers,  to  be  United  States  Attorney. 
B  3  considered  himself  a  lawyer  of  parts,  and  he  very  much 
wanted  an  opportunity  to  manifest  it — partly  for  the  pure 
gratification  of  it  and  partly  because  his  salary  was  Territo 
rially  meagre  (which  is  a  strong  expression).  Now  the  older 
ci-  izens  of  a  new  territory  look  down  upon  the  rest  of  the 
world  with  a  calm,  benevolent  compassion,  as  long  as  it  keeps 
out  of  the  way — when  it  gets  in  the  way  they  snub  it.  Some 
times  this  latter  takes  the  shape  of  a  practical  joke. 

One  morning  Dick  Hyde  rode  furiously  up  to  General 
Buncombe's  door  in  Carson  city  and  rushed  into  his  presence 
without  stopping  to  tie  his  horse.  He  seemed  much  excited. 
He  told  the  General  that  he  wanted  him  to  conduct  a  suit  for 
him  and  would  pay  him  five  hundred  dollars  if  he  achieved  a 
victory.  And  then,  with  violent  gestures  and  a  world  of 
profanity,  he  poured  out  his  griefs.  He  said  it  was  pretty 

let 


242 


HOW    DICK    HYDE    LOSV    HIS    RANCH. 


well  known  that  for  some  years  he  had  been  farming  (or 
ranching  as  the  more  customary  term  is)  in  Washoe  District, 
and  making  a  successful  thing  of  it,  and  furthermore  it  was 
known  that  his  ranch  was  situated  just  in  the  edge  of  the 
valley,  and  that  Tom  Morgan  owned  a  ranch  immediately 
above  it  on  the  mountain  side.  And  now  the  trouble  was,  that 
one  of  those  hated  and  dreaded  land-slides  had  come  and  slid 

Morgan's  ranch, 
fences,  cabins,  cattle, 
barns  and  everything 
down  on  top  of  his 
ranch  and  exactly 
covered  up  every 
single  vestige  of  his 
property,  to  a  depth 
of  about  thirty-eight 
feet.  Morgan  was 
in  possession  and  re 
fused  to  vacate  the 
premises — s  aid  /u. 
was  occupying  ^ 
own  cabin  and  not 
interfering  with  any 
body  else's — and  said 
the  cabin  was  stand 
ing  on  the  same  dirt 
and  same  ranch  it  had  always  stood  on, 
and  he  would  like  to  see  anybody  make 
him  vacate. 

TAKING  POSSESSION.  "  And  when  I  reminded  him,"  said 

Hyde,  weeping,  "  that  it  was  on  top  of  my  ranch  and  that  he 
was  trespassing,  he  had  the  infernal  meanness  to  ask  me  why 
didn't  I  stay  on  my  ranch  and  hold  possession  when  I  see  him 
a-coming !  "Why  didn't  I  stay  on  it,  the  blathering  lunatic — 
by  George,  when  I  heard  that  racket  and  looked  up  that  hill  it 
was  just  like  the  whole  world  was  a-ripping  and  a-t earing 
down  that  mountain  side — splinters,  and  cord-wTood,  thunder 
and  lightning,  hail  and  snow,  odds  and  ends  of  hay  stacks, 


HOW    MORGAN    OVERTOOK    HIM. 

and  awful  clouds  of  dust ! — trees  going  end  over  end  in  the 
air,  rocks  as  big  as  a  house  jumping  'bout  a  thousand  feet 
high  and  busting  into  ten  million  pieces,  cattle  turned  inside 
out  and  a-coining  head  on  with  their  tails  hanging  out  be 
tween  their  teeth ! — and  in  the  midst  of  all  that  wrack  and 
destruction  sot  that  cussed  Morgan  on  his  gate-post,  a-wonder- 
ing  why  I  didn't  stay  and  hold  possession  !  Laws  bless  me, 
I  just  took  one  glimpse,  General,  and  lit  out'n  the  county  in 
three  jumps  exactly. 

"  But  what  grinds  me  is  that  that  Morgan  hangs  on  there 
and  won't  move  off 'n  that  ranch — says  it's  his'n  and  he's  going 
to  keep  it — likes  it  better'n  he  did  when  it  was  higher  up  the 
hill.  Mad !  Well,  I've  been  so  mad  for  two  days  I  couldn't 
find  my  way  to  town — been  wandering  around  in  the  brush 
in  a  starving  condition — got  anything  here  to  drink,  General  ? 
But  I'm  here  now,  and  I'm  a-going  to  law.  You  hear  me  !  " 

Never  in  all  the  world,  perhaps,  were  a  man's  feelings  so 
outraged  as  were  the  General's.  He  said  he  had  never  heard 
of  such  high-handed  conduct  in  all  his  life  as  this  Morgan's. 
And  he  said  there  was  no  use  in  going  to  law — Morgan  had 
no  shadow  of  right  to  remain  where  he  was — nobody  in  the 
wide  world  would  uphold  him  in  it,  and  no  lawyer  would  take 
his  case  and  no  judge  listen  to  it.  Hyde  said  that  right  there 
was  where  he  was  mistaken — everybody  in  town  sustained 
Morgan  ;  Hal  Bray  ton,  a  very  smart  lawyer,  had  taken  his 
case  ;  the  courts  being  in  vacation,  it  was  to  be  tried  before  a 
referee,  and  ex-Governor  Roop  had  already  been  appointed  to 
that  office  and  would  open  his  court  in  a  large  public  hall  near 
the  hotel  at  two  that  afternoon. 

The  General  was  amazed.  He  said  he  had  suspected  be 
fore  that  the  people  of  that  Territory  were  fools,  and  now  he 
knew  it.  But  he  said  rest  easy,  rest  easy  and  collect  the  wit 
nesses,  for  the  victory  was  just  as  certain  as  if  the  conflict 
were  already  over.  Hyde  wiped  away  his  tears  and  left. 

At  two  in  the  afternoon  referee  Hoop's  Court  opened,  and 
Roop  appeared  throned  among  his  sheriffs,  the  witnesses, 
and  spectators,  and  wearing  upon  his  face  a  solemnity  so 
awe-inspiring  that  some  of  his  fellow-conspirators  had  misjjiv- 


244 


PREPARATION    FOR    THE    TRIAL. 


ings  that  maybe  he  had  not  comprehended,  after  all,  that  this 
was  merely  a  joke.  An  unearthly  stillness  prevailed,  for  at 
the  slightest  noise  the  judge  uttered  sternly  the  command : 

"  Order  in  the  Court ! " 

And  the  sheriffs  promptly  echoed  it.  Presently  the 
General  elbowed  his  way  through  the  crowd  of  spectators, 
with  his  arms  full  of  law-books,  and  on  his  ears  fell  an  order 
from  the  judge  which  was  the  first  respectful  recognition  of 
his  high  official  dignity  that  had  ever  saluted  them,  and  it 
trickled  pleasantly  through  his  whole  system : 

"Way  for  the  United  States  Attorney  ! " 

The  witnesses  were  called — legislators,  high  government 


A  GBEAT  EFFORT. 


officers,  ranchmen,  miners,  Indians,  Chinamen,  negroes.  Three 
fourths  of  them  were  called  by  the  defendant  Morgan,  but  no 
matter,  their  testimony  invariably  went  in  favor  of  the  plain" 


GENERAL  BUNCOMBE  IN  COURT.        24:5 

tiff  Hyde.  Each  new  witness  only  added  new  testimony  to 
the  absurdity  of  a  man's  claiming  to  own  another  man's  prop 
erty  because  his  farm  had  slid  down  on  top  of  it.  Then  the 
Morgan  lawyers  made  their  speeches,  and  seemed  to  make  sin 
gularly  weak  ones — they  did  really  nothing  to  help  the  Morgan 
cause.  And  now  the  General,  with  exultation  in  his  face,  got 
up  and  made  an  impassioned  effort ;  he  pounded  the  table,  he 
banged  the  law-books,  he  shouted,  and  roared,  and  howled,  he 
quoted  from  everything  and  everybody,  poetry,  sarcasm,  sta 
tistics,  history,  pathos,  bathos,  blasphemy,  and  wound  up  with 
a  grand  war-whoop  for  free  speech,  freedom  of  the  press,  free 
schools,  the  Glorious  Bird  of  America  and  the  principles  of 
eternal  justice !  [Applause.] 

When  the  General  sat  down,  he  did  it  with  the  convic 
tion  that  if  there  was  anything  in  good  strong  testimony,  a 
great  speech  and  believing  and  admiring  countenances  all 
around,  Mr.  Morgan's  case  was  killed.  Ex-Governor  Hoop 
leant  his  head  upon  his  hand  for  some  minutes,  thinking,  and 
the  still  audience  waited  for  his  decision.  Then  he  got  up 
and  stood  erect,  with  bended  head,  and  thought  again.  Then 
he  walked  the  floor  with  long,  deliberate  strides,  his  chin  in 
his  hand,  and  still  the  audience  waited.  At  last  he  returned 
to  his  throne,  seated  himself,  and  began,  impressively : 

"  Gentlemen,  I  feel  the  great  responsibility  that  rests  upon 
me  this  day.  This  is  no  ordinary  case.  On  the  contrary  it  is 
plain  that  it  is  the  most  solemn  and  awful  that  ever  man  was 
called  upon  to  decide.  Gentlemen,  I  have  listened  attentively 
to  the  evidence,  and  have  perceived  that  the  weight  of  it,  the 
overwhelming  weight  of  it,  is  in  favor  of  the  plaintiff  Hyde. 
I  have  listened  also  to  the  remarks  of  counsel,  with  high 
interest — and  especially  will  I  commend  the  masterly  and 
irrefutable  logic  of  the  distinguished  gentleman  who  repre 
sents  the  plaintiff.  But  gentlemen,  let  us  beware  how  we 
allow  mere  human  testimony,  human  ingenuity  in  argument 
and  human  ideas  of  equity,  to  influence  us  at  a  moment  so 
solemn  as  this.  Gentlemen,  it  ill  becomes  us,  worms  as  we  are, 
to  meddle  with  the  decrees  of  Heaven.  It  is  plain  to  me  that 


24:6 


A    VERDICT    WITHOUT    APPEAL. 


Heaven,  in  its  inscrutable  wisdom,  lias  seen  fit  to  move  this 
defendant's  ranch  for  a  purpose.  We  are  but  creatures,  aod 
we  must  submit.  If  Heaven  has  chosen  to  favor  the  defendant 
Morgan  in  this  marked  and  wonderful  manner;  and  if  Heaven, 
dissatisfied  with  the  position  of  the  Morgan  ranch  upon  the 
mountain  side,  has  chosen  to  remove  it  to  a  position  more 
eligible  and  more  advantageous  for  its  owner,  it  ill  becomes 
us,  insects  as  we  are,  to  question  the  legality  of  the  act  or 
inquire  into  the  reasons  that  prompted  it.  No — Heaven  created 
the  ranches  and  it  is  Heaven's  prerogative  to  rearrange  them, 
to  experiment  with  them,  to  shift  them  around  at  its  pleasure. 


REARRANGING  AND  SHIFTING. 


It  Is  for  us  to  submit,  without  repining.  I  warn  yon  that  this 
thing  which  has  happened  is  a  thing  with  which  the  sacri 
legious  hands  and  brains  and  tongues  of  men  must  not  meddle. 
Gentlemen,  it  is  the  verdict  of  this  court  that  the  plaintiff, 


A    SERIOUS    AFTERTHOUGHT.  247 

Richard  Hyde,  has  been  deprived  of  his  ranch  by  the  visita 
tion  of  God !  And  from  this  decision  there  is  no  appeal." 

Buncombe  seized  his  cargo  of  law-books  and  plunged  out 
of  the  court-room  frantic  with  indignation.  He  pronounced 
Hoop  to  be  a  miraculous  fool,  an  inspired  idiot.  In  all  good 
faith  he  returned  at  night  and  remonstrated  with  Hoop  upon 
his  extravagant  decision,  and  implored  him  to  walk  the  floor 
and  think  for  half  an  hour,  and  see  if  he  could  not  figure  out 
some  sort  of  modification  of  the  verdict.  Hoop  yielded  at  last 
and  got  up  to  walk.  He  walked  two  hours  and  a  half,  and  at 
last  his  face  lit  up  happily  and  he  told  Buncombe  it  had  oc 
curred  to  him  that  the  ranch  underneath  the  new  Morgan  ranch 
still  belonged  to  Hyde,  that  his  title  to  the  ground  was  just 
as  good  as  it  had  ever  been,  and  therefore  he  was  of  opinion 
that  Hyde  had  a  right  to  dig  it  out  from  under  there  and — 

The  General  never  waited  to  hear  the  end  of  it.  He  was 
always  an  impatient  and  irascible  man,  that  way.  At  the  end 
of  two  months  the  fact  that  he  had  been  played  upon  with  a 
joke  had  managed  to  bore  itself,  like  another  Hoosac  Tunnel, 
through  the  solid  adamant  of  his  understanding. 


CHAPTEE   XXXV. 

we  finally  left  for  Esmeralda,  horseback,  we  had 
Jf  V  an  addition  to  the  company  in  the  person  of  Capt. 
John  Nye,  the  Governor's  brother.  He  had  a  good  memory, 
and  a  tongue  hung  in  the  middle.  This  is  a  combination 
which  gives  immortality  to  conversation.  Capt.  John  never 
suffered  the  talk  to  flag  or  falter  once  during  the  hundred  and 
twenty  miles  of  the  journey.  In  addition  to  his  conversa 
tional  powers,  he  had  one  or  two  other  endowments  of  a 
marked  character.  One  was  a  singular  "handiness"  about 
doing  anything  and  everything,  from  laying  out  a  railroad  or 
organizing  a  political  party,  down  to  sewing  on  buttons,  shoe 
ing  a  horse,  or  setting  a  broken  leg,  or  a  hen.  Another  was  a 
spirit  of  accommodation  that  prompted  him  to  take  the  needs, 
difficulties  and  perplexities  of  anybody  and  everybody  upon 
his  own  shoulders  at  any  and  all  times,  and  dispose  of  them 
with  admirable  facility  and  alacrity — hence  he  always  managed 
to  find  vacant  beds  in  crowded  inns,  and  plenty  to  eat  in  the 
emptiest  larders.  And  finally,  wherever  he  met  a  man, 
woman  or  child,  in  camp,  inn  or  desert,  he  either  knew  such 
parties  personally  or  had  been  acquainted  with  a  relative  of 
the  same.  Such  another  traveling  comrade  was  never  seen 
before.  I  cannot  forbear  giving  a  specimen  of  the  way  in 
which  he  overcame  difficulties.  On  the  second  day  out,  we 
arrived,  very  tired  and  hungry,  at  a  poor  little  inn  in  the 
desert,  and  were  told  that  the  house  was  full,  no  provisions  on 
hand,  and  neither  hay  nor  barley  to  spare  for  the  horses — we 
must  move  on.  The  rest  of  us  wanted  to  hurry  on  while  it 


A    MAN    WITH    BAD    TRAITS.  24:9 

was  yet  light,  but  Capt.  John  insisted  on  stopping  awhile. 
We  dismounted  and  entered.  There  was  no  welcome  for  us 
on  any  face.  Capt.  John  began  his  blandishments,  and  within 
twenty  minutes  he  had  accomplished  the  following  things, 
viz. :  found  old  acquaintances  in  three  teamsters ;  discovered 
that  he  used  to  go  to  school  with  the  landlord's  mother; 
recognized  his  wife  as  a  lady  whose  life  he  had  saved  once  in 
California,  by  stopping  her  runaway  horse ;  mended  a  child's 
broken  toy  and  won  the  favor  of  its  mother,  a  guest  of  the 
inn ;  helped  the  hostler  bleed  a  horse,  and  prescribed  for 
another  horse  that  had  the  "  heaves  " ;  treated  the  entire  party 
three  times  at  the  landlord's  bar  ;  produced  a  later  paper  than 
anybody  had  seen  for  a  week  and  sat  himself  down  to  read  the 
news  to  a  deeply  interested  audience.  The  result,  summed 
up,  was  as  follows :  The  hostler  found  plenty  of  feed  for  our 
horses ;  we  had  a  trout  supper,  an  exceedingly  sociable  time  after 
it,  good  bed§  to  sleep  in,  and  a  surprising  breakfast  in  the 
morning — and  when  we  left,  we  left  lamented  by  all !  Capt. 


WE   LEFT   LAMENTED. 


John  had  some  bad  traits,  but  he  had  some  uncommonly  valu 
able  ones  to  offset  them  with. 

Esmeralda  was  in  many  respects  another  Humboldt,  but 
in  a  little  more  forward  state.  The  claims  we  had  been 
paying  assessments  on  were  entirely  worthless,  and  we  threw 
them  away.  The  principal  one  cropped  out  of  the  top  of  a 
knoll  that  was  fourteen  feet  high,  and  the  inspired  Board  of 


250 


BASE  OPERATIONS  LOOKED  INTO. 


Directors  were  running  a  tunnel  under  that  knoll  to  strike  tho 
ledge.  The  tunnel  would  have  to  be  seventy  feet  long,  and 
would  then  strike  the  ledge  at  the  same  depth  that  a  shaft 
twelve  feet  deep  would  have  reached !  The  Board  were  living 
on  the  "  assessments."  [N.  B. — This  hint  comes  too  late  for  the 
enlightenment  of  New  York  silver  miners ;  they  have  already 
learned  all  about  this  neat  trick  by  experience.]  The  Board 
had  no  desire  to  strike  the  ledge,  knowing  that  it  was  as  barren 
of  silver  as  a  curbstone.  This  reminiscence  calls  to  mind  Jim 
Townsend's  tunnel.  He  had  paid  assessments  on  a  mine 
called  the  "  Daley  "  till  he  was  well-nigh  penniless.  Finally 
an  assessment  was  levied  to  run  a  tunnel  two  hundred  and  fifty 
feet  on  the  Daley,  and  Townsend  went  up  on  the  hill  to  look 
into  matters.  He  found  the  Daley  cropping  out  of  the  apex 


PICTURE  OF  TOWNSEND'S  TUNNEL. 

of  an  exceedingly  sharp-pointed  peak,  and  a  couple  of  men  up 
there  "  facing  "  the  proposed  tunnel.  Townsend  made  a  cal 
culation.  Then  he  said  to  the  men : 

"  So  you  have  taken  a  contract  to  run  a  tunnel  into  this 
hill  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  to  strike  this  ledge  ? " 

"Yes,  sir." 


BOTTOM  TOUCHED  AT  LAST.  251 

"  Well,  do  you  know  that  you  have  got  one  of  the  most 
expensive  and  arduous  undertakings  before  you  that  was  ever 
conceived  by  man  ? " 

"Why  no— how  is  that?" 

"  Because  this  hill  is  only  twenty-five  feet  through  from 
side  to  side;  and  so  you  have  got  to  build  two  hundred  and 
twenty-five  feet  of  your  tunnel  on  trestle-work !  " 

The  ways  of  silver  mining  Boards  are  exceedingly  dark 
and  sinuous. 

We  took  up  various  claims,  and  commenced  shafts  and 
tunnels  on  them,  but  never  finished  any  of  them.  We  had  to 
do  a  certain  amount  of  work  on  each  to  "  hold  "  it,  else  other 
parties  could  seize  our  property  after  the  expiration  of  ten 
days.  We  were  always  hunting  up  new  claims  and  doing  a 
little  work  on  them  and  then  waiting  for  a  buyer — who  never 
came.  We  never  found  any  ore  that  would  yield  more  than 
fifty  dollars  a  ton ;  and  as  the  mills  charged  fifty  dollars  a 
ton  for  working  ore  and  extracting  the  silver,  our  pocket- 
money  melted  steadily  away  and  none  returned  to  take  its 
place.  We  lived  in  a  little  cabin  and  cooked  for  ourselves ; 
and  altogether  it  was  a  hard  life,  though  a  hopeful  one — for 
we  never  ceased  to  expect  fortune  and  a  customer  to  burst 
upon  us  some  day. 

At  last,  when  flour  reached  a  dollar  a  pound,  and  money 
could  not  be  borrowed  on  the  best  security,  at  less  than  eight 
per  cent  a  month  (I  being  without  the  security,  too),  I  aban 
doned  mining  and  went  to  milling.  That  is  to  say,  I  went  to 
work  as  a  common  laborer  in  a  quartz  mill,  at  ten  dollars  a 
week  and  board. 


CHAPTER    XXXYI. 

I  HAD  already  learned  how  hard  and  long  and  dismal  a  task 
it  is  to  burrow  down  into  the  bowels  of  the  earth  and  get 
out  the  coveted  ore ;  and  now  I  learned  that  the  burrowing 
was  only  half  the  work ;  and  that  to  get  the  silver  out  of  the 
ore  was  the  dreary  and  laborious  other  half  of  it.  We  had  to 
turn  out  at  six  in  the  morning  and  keep  at  it  till  dark.  This 
mill  was  a  six-stamp  affair,  driven  by  steam.  Six  tall,  upright 
rods  of  iron,  as  large  as  a  man's  ankle,  and  heavily  shod  with 
a  mass  of  iron  and  steel  at  their  lower  ends,  wTere  framed 
together  like  a  gate,  and  these  rose  and  fell,  one  after  the 
other,  in  a  ponderous  dance,  in  an  iron  box  called  a  "  battery." 
Each  of  these  rods  or  stamps  weighed  six  hundred  pounds. 
One  of  us  stood  by  the  battery  all  day  long,  breaking  up 
masses  of  silver-bearing  rock  with  a  sledge  and  shoveling  it 
into  the  battery.  The  ceaseless  dance  of  the  stamps  pulver 
ized  the  rock  to  powder,  and  a  stream  of  water  that  trickled 
into  the  battery  turned  it  to  a  creamy  paste.  The  minutest 
particles  were  driven  through  a  fine  wire  screen  which  fitted 
close  around  the  battery,  and  were  washed  into  great  tubs 
warmed  by  super-heated  steam — amalgamating  pans,  they  are 
called.  The  mass  of  pulp  in  the  pans  was  kept  constantly 
stirred  up  by  revolving  "  mullers."  A  quantity  of  quicksilver 
was  kept  always  in  the  battery,  and  this  seized  some  of  the 
liberated  gold  and  silver  particles  and  held  on  to  them;  quick 
silver  was  shaken  in  a  fine  shower  into  the  pans,  also,  about 
every  half  hour,  through  a  buckskin  sack.  Quantities  of 


AT    WORK    IN    A    QUARTZ    MILL. 


253 


coarse  salt  and  sulphate  of  copper  were  added,  from  time  to 
time  to  assist  the  amalgamation  by  destroying  base  metals 
which  coated  the  gold  and  silver  and  would  not  let  it  unite 
with  the  quicksilver.  All  these  tiresome  things  we  had  to 


QUARTZ  MILL  IN  NEVADA, 

attend  to  constantly.  Streams  of  dirty  water  flowed  always 
from  the  pans  and  were  carried  off  in  broad  wooden  troughs 
to  the  ravine.  One  would  not  suppose  that  atoms  of  gold  and 
silver  would  float  on  top  of  six  inches  of  water,  but  they  did  ; 
and  in  order  to  catch  them,  coarse  blankets  were  laid  in  the 
troughs,  and  little  obstructing  "riffles"  charged  with  quick 
silver  were  placed  here  and  there  across  the  troughs  also. 
These  riffles  had  to  be  cleaned  and  the  blankets  washed  out 
every  evening,  to  get  their  precious  accumulations — and  after, 
all  this  eternity  of  trouble  one  third  of  the  silver  and  gold  in 
a  ton  of  rock  would  find  its  way  to  the  end  of  the  troughs  in 
the  ravine  at  last  and  have  to  be  worked  over  again  some  day. 
There  is  nothing  so  aggravating  as  silver  milling.  There 
never  was  any  idle  time  in  that  mill.  There  was  always 
something  to  do.  It  is  a  pity  that  Adam  could  not  have  gone 


254  WASHING  BLANKETS  AND  "SCREENING  TAILINGS." 

straight  out  of  Eden  into  a  quartz  mill,  in  order  to  understand 
the  full  force  of  his  doom  to  "  earn  his  bread  by  the  sweat  of 
his  brow."  Every  now  and  then,  during  the  day,  we  had  to 
scoop  some  pulp  out  of  the  pans,  and  tediously  "wash"  it  in  a 
horn  spoon — wash  it  little  by  little  over  the  edge  till  at  last 
nothing  was  left  but  some  little  dull  globules  of  quicksilver  in 
the  bottom.  If  they  were  soft  and  yielding,  the  pan  needed 
some  salt  or  some  sulphate  of  copper  or  some  other  chemical 
rubbish  to  assist  digestion  ;  if  they  were  crisp  to  the  touch  and 
would  retain  a  dint,  they  were  freighted  with  all  the  silver  and 
gold  they  could  seize  and  hold,  and  consequently  the  pans 
needed  a  fresh  charge  of  quicksilver.  When  there  was  noth 
ing  else  to  do,  one  could  always  "  screen  tailings."  That  is  to 
say,  he  could  shovel  up  the  dried  sand  that  had  washed  down 
to  the  ravine  through  the  troughs  and  dash  it  against  an  up 
right  wire  screen  to  free  it  from  pebbles  and  prepare  it  for 


ANOTHER  PROCESS  OF  AMALGAMATION. 


working  over.  The  process  of  amalgamation  differed  in  the 
various  mills,  and  this  included  changes  in  style  of  pans  and 
other  machinery,  and  a  great  diversity  of  opinion  existed  as  to 
the  best  in  use,  but  none  of  the  methods  employed,  involved 


MAKING    SILVER    BRICKS.  255 

the  principle  of  milling  ore  without  "  screening  the  tailings." 
Of  all  recreations  in  the  world,  screening  tailings  on  a  hot 
day,  with  a  long-handled  shovel,  is  the  most  undesirable. 

At  the  end  of  the  week  the  machinery  was  stopped  and 
we  "  cleaned  up."  That  is  to  say,  we  got  the  pulp  out  of  the 
pans  and  batteries,  and  washed  the  mud  patiently  away  till 
nothing  was  left  but  the  long  accumulating  mass  of  quicksilver, 
with  its  imprisoned  treasures.  This  we  made  into  heavy, 
compact  snow-balls,  and  piled  them  up  in  a  bright,  luxurious 
heap  for  inspection.  Making  these  snow-balls  cost  me  a  fine 
gold  ring — that  and  ignorance  together;  for  the  quicksilver 
invaded  the  ring  with  the  same  facility  with  which  water  sat 
urates  a  sponge — separated  its  particles  and  the  ring  crumbled 
to  pieces. 

We  put  our  pile  of  quicksilver  balls  into  an  iron  retort 
that  had  a  pipe  leading  from  it  to  a  pail  of  water,  and  then 
applied  a  roasting  heat.  The  quicksilver  turned  to  vapor, 
escaped  through  the  pipe  into  the  pail,  and  the  water  turned 
it  into  good  wholesome  quicksilver  again.  Quicksilver  is  very 
costly,  and  they  never  waste  it.  On  opening  the  retort,  there 
was  our  week's  work — a' lump  of  pure  white,  frosty  looking 
silver,  twice  as  large  as  a  man's  head.  Perhaps  a  fifth  of  the 
mass  was  gold,  but  the  color  of  it  did  not  show — would  not 
have  shown  if  two  thirds  of  it  had  been  gold.  We  melted  it 
up  and  made  a  solid  brick  of  it  by  pouring  it  into  an  iron 
brick-mould. 

By  such  a  tedious  and  laborious  process  were  silver  bricks 
obtained.  This  mill  was  but  one  of  many  others  in  operation 
at  the  time.  The  first  one  in  Nevada  was  built  at  Egan  Can 
yon  and  was  a  small  insignificant  affair  and  compared  most 
unfavorably  with  some  of  the  immense  establishments  after 
wards  located  at  Virginia  City  and  elsewhere. 

From  our  bricks  a  little  corner  was  chipped  oif  for  the 
"  fire-assay  " — a  method  used  to  determine  the  proportions  of 
gold,  silver  and  base  metals  in  the  mass.  This  is  an  interest 
ing  process.  The  chip  is  hammered  out  as  thin  as  paper  and 
weighed  on  scales  so  fine  and  sensitive  that  if  vou  weigh  a 


256 


FIRE-ASSAY"    PROCESS 


two-inch  scrap  of  paper  on  them  and  then  write  jour  name  on 
the  paper  with  a  coarse,  soft  pencil  and  weigh  it  again,  the 


FIRST  QUARTZ    MILL  IN  NEVADA. 

scales  will  take  marked  notice  of  the  addition.  Then  a  little 
lead  (also  weighed)  is  rolled  up  with  the  flake  of  silver  and 
the  two  are  melted  at  a  great  heat  in  a  small  vessel  called  a 
cupel,  made  by  compressing  bone  ashes  into  a  cup-shape  in  a 
steel  mold.  The  base  metals  oxydize  and  are  absorbed  with 
the  lead  into  the  pores  of  the  cupel.  A  button  or  globule  of 
perfectly  pure  gold  and  silver  is  left  behind,  and  by  weighing 
it  and  noting  the  loss,  the  assayer  knows  the  proportion  of  base 
metal  the  brick  contains.  He  has  to  separate  the  gold  from 
the  silver  now.  The  button  is  hammered  out  flat  and  thin, 
put  in  the  furnace  and  kept  some  time  at  a  red  heat ;  after 
cooling  it  off  it  is  rolled  up  like  a  quill  and  heated  in  a  glass 
vessel  containing  nitric  acid ;  the  acid  dissolves  the  silver  and 
leaves  the  gold  pure  and  ready  to  be  weighed  on  its  own  merits. 


ASSAYING    AS    A    BUSINESS. 


257 


Then  salt  water  is  poured  into  the  vessel  containing  the  dis 
solved  silver  and  the  silver  returns  to  palpable  form  again  and 
sinks  to  the  bottom.  Nothing  now  remains  but  to  weigh  it ; 
then  the  proportions  of  the  several  metals  contained  in  the 
brick  are  known,  and  the  assayer  stamps  the  value  of  the  brick 
upon  its  surface. 

The  sagacious  reader  will  know  now,  without  being  told, 
that  the  speculative  miner,  in  getting  a  "fire-assay"  made  of  a 
piece  of  rock  from  his  mine  (to  help  him  sell  the  same),  was 
not  in  the  habit  of  picking  out  the  least  valuable  fragment  of 
rock  on  his  dump-pile,  but  quite  the  contrary.  I  have  seen 
men  hunt  over  a  pile  of  nearly  worthless  quartz  for  an  hour, 
and  at  last  find  a  little  piece  as  large  as  a  filbert,  which  was 
rich  in  gold  and  silver — and  this  was  reserved  for  a  fire-assay ! 
Of  course  the  fire-assay  would  demonstrate  that  a  ton  of  such 

rock  would  yield  hundreds 
of  dollars — and  on  such  as 
says  many  an  utterly  worth 
less  mine  was  sold. 

Assaying  was  a  good 
business,  and  so  some  men 
engaged  in  it,  occasionally, 
who  were  not  strictly  sci 
entific  and  capable.  One 
assayer  got  such  rich  results 
out  of  all  specimens  brought 
to  him  that  in  time  he 
acquired  almost  a  monopoly 
of  the  business.  But  like 


all  men  who  achieve  success, 
he  became  an  object  of  envy 
and  suspicion.  The  other 
assayers  entered  into  a 

conspiracy  against  him,  and  let  some  prominent  citizens  into 
the  secret  in  order  to  show  that  they  meant  fairly.  Then  they 
broke  a  little  fragment  off  a  carpenter's  grindstone  and  got  a 
stranger  to  take  it  to  the  popular  scientist  and  get  it  assayed. 
17f 


A  SLICE   OF    RICH    ORB. 


258  A    STRIKE    FOR    HIGHER    WAGES. 

In  the  course  of  an  hour  the  result  came — whereby  it  ap» 
peared  that  a  ton  of  that  rock  would  yield  $1,284.40  in  silver 
and  $366.36  in  gold  ! 

Due  publication  of  the  whole  matter  was  made  in  the 
paper,  and  the  popular  assayer  left  town  "  between  two  days." 

I  will  remark,  in  passing,  that  I  only  remained  in  the 
milling  business  one  week.  I  told  my  employer  I  could  not 
stay  longer  without  an  advance  in  my  wages ;  that  I  liked 
quartz  milling,  indeed  \vas  infatuated  with  it;  that  I  had 
never  before  grown  so  tenderly  attached  to  an  occupation  in 
so  short  a  time;  that  nothing,  it  seemed  to  me,  gave  such 
scope  to  intellectual  activity  as  feeding  a  battery  and  screening 
tailings,  and  nothing  so  stimulated  the  moral  attributes  as 
retorting  bullion  and  washing  blankets — still,  I  felt  constrained 
to  ask  an  increase  of  salary. 

He  said  he  was  paying  me  ten  dollars  a  week,  and  thought 
it  a  good  round  sum.  How  much  did  I  want  ? 

I  said  about  four  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  month,  and 
board,  was  about  all  I  could  reasonably  ask,  considering  the 
hard  times. 

I  was  ordered  off  the  premises !  And  yet,  when  I  look 
back  to  those  days  and  call  to  mind  the  exceeding  hardness  of 
the  labor  I  performed  in  that  mill,  I  only  regret  that  I  did  not 
ask  him  seven  hundred  thousand. 

Shortly  after  this  I  began  to  grow  crazy,  along  with  the 
rest  of  the  population,  about  the  mysterious  and  wonderful 
"cement  mine,"  and  to  make  preparations  to  take  advantage 
of  any  opportunity  that  might  offer  to  go  and  help  hunt  for  it. 


OHAPTEE   XXXVII. 

IT  was  somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mono  Lake  that 
the  marvellous  Whiteman  cement  mine  was  supposed  to 
lie.  Every  now  and  then  it  would  be  reported  that  Mr.  W. 
had  passed  stealthily  through  Esmeralda  at  dead  of  night,  in 
disguise,  and  then  we  would  have  a  wild  excitement — because 
he  must  be  steering  for  his  secret  mine,  and  now  was  the  time 
to  follow  him.  In  less  than  three  hours  after  daylight  all  the 
horses  and  mules  and  donkeys  in  the  vicinity  would  be  bought, 
hired  or  stolen,  and  half  the  community  would  be  off  for  the 
mountains,  following  in  the  wrake  of  Whiteman.  But  W.  would 
drift  about  through  the  mountain  gorges  for  days  together,  in 
a  purposeless  sort  of  way,  until  the  provisions  of  the  miners  ran 
out,  and  they  would  have  to  go  back  home.  I  have  known  it 
reported  at  eleven  at  night,  in  a  large  mining  camp,  that  White 
man  had  just  passed  through,  and  in  two  hours  the  streets,  so 
quiet  before,  would  be  swarming  with  men  and  animals. 
Every  individual  would  be  trying  to  be  very  secret,  but  yet 
venturing  to  whisper  to  just  one  neighbor  that  W.  had  passed 
through.  And  long  before  daylight — this  in  the  dead  of  Win 
ter — the  stampede  would  be  complete,  the  camp  deserted,  and 
the  whole  population  gone  chasing  after  W. 

The  tradition  was  that  in  the  early  immigration,  more  than 
twenty  years  ago,  three  young  Germans,  brothers,  who  had 
survived  an  Indian  massacre  on  the  Plains,  wandered  on  foot 
through  the  deserts,  avoiding  all  trails  and  roads,  and  simply 
holding  a  westerly  direction  and  hoping  to  find  California 
before  they  starved,  or  died  of  fatigue.  And  in  a  gorge  in  the 
mountains  they  sat  down  to  rest  one  day,  when  one  of  them 


260 


THE    WONDERFUL    CEMENT    MINE. 


noticed  a  curious  vein  of  cement  running  along  the  ground, 
shot  full  of  lumps  of  dull  yellow  metal.  They  saw  that  it  was 
gold,  and  that  here  was  a  fortune  to  be  acquired  in  a  single  day. 
The  vein  was  about  as  wide  as  a  curbstone,  and  fully  two  thirds 
of  it  was  pure  gold.  Every  pound  of  the  wonderful  cement  was 

worth  well-nigh  $200.  Each 
of  the  brothers  loaded  him- 
seil  with  aoout  twenty-five 
pounds  of  it,  arid  then  they 
covered  up  all  traces  of  the 
vein,  made  a  rude  drawing 
of  the  locality  and  the  prin 
cipal  landmarks  in  the  vicin 
ity,  and  started  westward 
again.  But  troubles  thick 
ened  about  them.  In  their 
wanderings  one  brother  fell 
and  broke  his  leg,  and 
the  others  were  obliged  to 


go  on  and  leave  him  to  die 
in  the  wilderness.  Another, 
worn  out  and  starving,  gave 
up  by  and  by,  and  laid  down 
to  die,  but  after  two  or  three 
weeks  of  incredible  hard* 
ships,  the  third  reached  the 
settlements  of  California  ex 
hausted,  sick,  and  his  mind 
deranged  by  his  sufferings. 
He  had  thrown  away  all  his 
cement  but  a  few  fragments, 
but  these  were  sufficient  to 

set  everybody  wild  with  excitement.  However,  he  had  had 
enough  of  the  cement  country,  and  nothing  could  induce  him 
to  lead  a  party  thither.  He  was  entirely  content  to  work  on 
a  farm  for  wages.  But  he  gave  Whiteman  his  map,  and 
described  the  cement  region  as  well  as  he  could,  and  thus 


THE  SAVED  BROTHER. 


A    SECRET    EXPEDITION.  261 

transferred  the  curse  to  that  gentleman — for  when  I  had  my 
one  accidental  glimpse  of  Mr.  W.  in  Esmeralda  he  had  been 
hunting  for  the  lost  mine,  in  hunger  and  thirst,  poverty  and 
sickness,  for  twelve  or  thirteen  years.  Some  people  believed 
he  had  found  it,  but  most  people  believed  he  had  not.  I  saw 
a  piece  of  cement  as  large  as  iny  fist  which  was  said  to  have 
been  given  to  Whiteman  by  the  young  German,  and  it  was  of 
a  seductive  nature.  Lumps  of  virgin  gold  were  as  thick  in  it 
as  raisins  in  a  slice  of  fruit  cake.  The  privilege  of  working 
such  a  mine  one  week  would  be  sufficient  for  a  man  of  reason 
able  desires. 

A  new  partner  of  ours,  a  Mr.  Higbie,  knew  Whiteman  well 
by  sight,  and  a  friend  of  ours,  a  Mr.  Yan  Dorn,  was  well  ac 
quainted  with  him,  and  not  only  that,  but  had  Whiteman's 
promise  that  he  should  have  a  private  hint  in  time  to  enable 
him  to  join  the  next  cement  expedition.  Yan  Dorn  had  prom 
ised  to  extend  the  hint  to  us.  One  evening  Higbie  came  in 
greatly  excited,  and  said  he  felt  certain  he  had  recognized 
Whiteman,  up  town,  disguised  and  in  a  pretended  state  of  in 
toxication.  In  a  little  while  Yan  Dorn  arrived  and  confirmed 
the  news ;  and  so  we  gathered  in  our  cabin  and  with  heads 
close  together  arranged  our  plans  in  impressive  whispers. 

We  were  to  leave  town  quietly,  after  midnight,  in  two 
or  three  small  parties,  so  as  not  to  attract  attention,  and 
meet  at  dawn  on  the  "  divide  "  overlooking  Mono  Lake,  eight 
or  nine  miles  distant.  We  were  to  make  no  noise  after  start 
ing,  and  not  speak  above  a  whisper  under  any  circumstances. 
It  was  believed  that  for  once  Whiteman's  presence  was  un 
known  in  the  town  and  his  expedition  unsuspected.  Our 
conclave  broke  up  at  nine  o'clock,  and  we  set  about  our 
preparations  diligently  and  with  profound  secrecy.  At  eleven 
o'clock  we  saddled  our  horses,  hitched  them  with  their  long 
riatas  (or  lassos),  and  then  brought  out  a  side  of  bacon,  a  sack 
of  beans,  a  small  sack  of  coffee,  some  sugar,  a  hundred  pounds 
of  flour  in  sacks,  some  tin  cups  and  a  coffee  pot,  frying  pan 
and  some  few  other  necessary  articles.  All  these  things  were 
"  packed  "  on  the  back  of  a  led  horse — and  whoever  has  not  been 


262          A  NOCTURNAL  ADVENTURE. 

taught,  by  a  Spanish  adept,  to  pack  an  animal,  let  him  never 
hope  to  do  the  thing  by  natural  smartness.  That  is  impossible. 
Higbie  had  had  some  experience,  but  was  not  perfect.  He 
put  on  the  pack  saddle  (a  thing  like  a  saw-buck),  piled  the 
property  on  it  and  then  wound  a  rope  all  over  and  about  it 
and  under  it,  "  every  which  way,"  taking  a  hitch  in  it  every 
now  and  then,  and  occasionally  surging  back  on  it  till  the 
horse's  sides  sunk  in  and  he  gasped  for  breath — but  every  time 
the  lashings  grew  tight  in  one  place  they  loosened  in  another. 
We  never  did  get  the  load  tight  all  over,  but  we  got  it  so  that 
it  would  do,  after  a  fashion,  and  then  we  started,  in  single  file, 
close  order,  and  without  a  word.  It  was  a  dark  night.  We 
kept  the  middle  of  the  road,  and  proceeded  in  a  slow  walk 
past  the  rows  of  cabins,  and  whenever  a  miner  came  to  his 
door  I  trembled  for  fear  the  light  would  shine  on  us  and  ex 
cite  curiosity.  But  nothing  happened.  We  began  the  long 
winding  ascent  of  the  canyon,  toward  the  "  divide,"  and  pres 
ently  the  cabins  began  to  grow  infrequent,  and  the  intervals 
between  them  wider  and  wider,  and  then  I  began  to  breathe 
tolerably  freely  and  feel  less  like  a  thief  and  a  murderer.  I 
was  in  the  rear,  leading  the  pack  horse.  As  the  ascent  grew 
steeper  he  grew  proportionately  less  satisfied  with  his  cargo, 
and  began  to  pull  back  on  his  riata  occasionally  and  delay 
progress.  My  comrades  were  passing  out  of  sight  in  the 
gloom.  I  was  getting  anxious.  I  coaxed  and  bullied  the 
pack  horse  till  I  presently  got  him  into  a  trot,  and  then  the 
tin  cups  and  pans  strung  about  his  person  frightened  him  and 
he  ran.  His  riata  was  wound  around  the  pummel  of  my 
saddle,  and  so,  as  he  went  by  he  dragged  me  from  my  horse 
and  the  two  animals  traveled  briskly  on  without  me.  But  I 
was  not  alone — the  loosened  cargo  tumbled  overboard  from 
the  pack  horse  and  fell  close  to  me.  It  was  abreast  of  almost 
the  last  cabin.  A  miner  came  out  and  said : 

"Hello!" 

I  was  thirty  steps  from  him,  and  knew  he  could  not  seo 
me,  it  was  so  very  dark  in  the  shadow  of  the  mountain.  So  I 
lay  still.  Another  head  appeared  in  the  light  of  the  cabin 


IN    A    DISTRESSED    POSITION. 


263 


door,  and  presently  the  two  men  walked  toward  me.     They 
stepped  within  ten  steps  of  me,  and  one  said : 
"  'St!    Listen." 


ON  A  SECRET  EXPEDITION. 

I  could  not  have  been  in  a  more  distressed  state  if  I  had 
been  escaping  justice  with  a  price  on  my  head.  Then  the 
miners  appeared  to  sit  down  on  a  boulder,  though  I  could  not 
ee:j  them  distinctly  enough  to  be  very  sure  what  they  did. 
Oie  said : 

"  I  heard  a  noise,  as  plain  as  I  ever  heard  anything.  It 
seemed  to  be  about  there — " 

A  stone  whizzed  by  my  head.  I  flattened  myself  out  in 
the  dust  like  a  postage  stamp,  and  thought  to  myself  if  he 
mended  his  aim  ever  so  little  he  would  probably  hear  another 
noise.  In  my  heart,  now,  I  execrated  secret  expeditions.  I 
promised  myself  that  this  should  be  my  last,  though  the  Sierras 
were  ribbed  with  cement  veins.  Then  one  of  the  men  said : 

"  I'll  tell  you  what !  Welch  knew  what  he  was  talking  about 


264  A    WEEK'S    HOLIDAY. 

when  he  said  he  saw  Whiteman  to-day.  I  heard  horses — that 
was  the  noise.  I  am  going  down  to  Welch's,  right  away." 

They  left  and  I  was  glad.  I  did  not  care  whither  they 
went,  so  they  went.  I  was  willing  they  should  visit  Welch, 
and  the  sooner  the  better. 

As  soon  as  they  closed  their  cabin  door  my  comrades 
emerged  from  the  gloom  ;  they  had  caught  the  horses  and  were 
waiting  for  a  clear  coast  again.  We  remounted  the  cargo  on 
the  pack  horse  and  got  under  way,  and  as  day  broke  we 
reached  the  "  divide  "  and  joined  Yan  Dorn.  Then  we  jour 
neyed  down  into  the  valley  of  the  Lake,  and  feeling  secure, 
we  halted  to  cook  breakfast,  for  we  were  tired  and  sleepy  and 
hungry.  Three  hours  later  the  rest  of  the  population  filed  over 
the  "  divide  "  in  a  long  procession,  and  drifted  off  out  of  sight 
around  the  borders  of  the  Lake  ! 

Whether  or  not  my  accident  had  produced  this  result  we 
never  knew,  but  at  least  one  thing  was  certain — the  secret  was 
out  and  Whiteman  would  not  enter  upon  a  search  for  the 
cement  mine  this  time.  We  were  filled  with  chagrin. 

We  held  a  council  and  decided  to  make  the  best  of  our 
misfortune  and  enjoy  a  week's  holiday  on  the  borders  of  the 
curious  Lake.  Mono,  it  is  sometimes  called,  and  sometimes 
the  "  Dead  Sea  of  California."  It  is  one  of  the  strangest  freaks 
of  Nature  to  be  found  in  any  land,  but  it  is  hardly  ever  men 
tioned  in  print  and  very  seldom  visited,  because  it  lies  away 
off  the  usual  routes  of  travel  and  besides  is  so  difficult  to  get 
at  that  only  men  content  to  endure  the  roughest  life  will  con 
sent  to  take  upon  themselves  the  discomforts  of  such  a  trip. 
On  the  morning  of  our  second  day,  we  traveled  around  to  a 
remote  and  particularly  wild  spot  on  the  borders  of  the  Lake, 
where  a  stream  of  fresh,  ice-cold  water  entered  it  from  the 
mountain  side,  and  then  we  went  regularly  into  camp.  We 
hired  a  large  boat  and  two  shot-guns  from  a  lonely  ranchman 
who  lived  some  ten  miles  further  on,  and  made  ready  for  com 
fort  and  recreation.  We  soon  got  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
the  Lake  and  all  its  peculiarities. 


CHAPTEE    XXXYIII. 

MONO  LAKE  lies  in  a  lifeless,  treeless,  hideous  desert, 
eight  thousand  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  and  is 
guarded  by  mountains  two  thousand  feet  higher,  whose  sum 
mits  are  always  clothed  in  clouds.  This  solemn,  silent,  sailless 
sea — this  lonely  tenant  of  the  loneliest  spot  on  earth — is  little 
graced  with  the  picturesque.  It  is  an  unpretending  expanse 
of  grayish  water,  about  a  hundred  miles  in  circumference, 
with  two  islands  in  its  centre,  mere  upheavals  of  rent  and 
scorched  and  blistered  lava,  snowed  over  with  gray  banks  and 
drifts  of  pumice-stone  and  ashes,  the  winding  sheet  of  the 
dead  volcanp,  wrhose  vast  crater  the  lake  has  seized  upon  and 
occupied. 

The  lake  is  two  hundred  feet  deep,  and  its  sluggish  waters 
are  so  strong  with  alkali  that  if  you  only  dip  the  most  hope 
lessly  soiled  garment  into  them  once  or  twice,  and  wring  it  out, 
it  will  be  found  as  clean  as  if  it  had  been  through  the  ablest 
of  washerwomen's  hands.  While  we  camped  there  our  laundry 
work  was  easy.  We  tied  the  week's  washing  astern  of  our 
boat,  and  sailed  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  and  the  job  was  complete, 
all  to  the  wringing  out.  If  we  threw  the  water  on  our  heads 
and  gave  them  a  rub  or  so,  the  white  lather  wrould  pile  up  three 
inches  high.  This  water  is  not  good  for  bruised  places  arid 
abrasions  of  the  skin.  We  had  a  valuable  dog.  He  had  raw 
places  on  him.  He  had  more  raw  places  on  him  than  sound 
ones.  He  was  the  rawest  dog  I  almost  ever  saw.  He  jumped 
overboard  one  day  to  get  away  from  the  flies.  But  it  was  bad 


266 


VERY    HARD    ON    OUR    DOG. 


judgment.     In  his  condition,  it  would  have  been  just  as  com 
fortable  to  jump  into  the  fire.     The  alkali  water  nipped  him 

in  all  the  raw  places 
simultaneously,  and 
he  struck  out  for  the 
shore  with  consider 
able  interest.  He 
yelped  and  barked 
and  howled  as  he 
went  —  and  by  the 
time  he  got  to  the 
si  lore  there  was  no 
bark  to  him — for  he 
had  barked  the  bark 
all  out  of  his  inside, 
and  the  alkali  water 
had  cleaned  the  bark 
all  off  his  outside, 

and  he  probably  wished  he  had  never  embarked  in  any  such 
enterprise.     He  ran  round  and  round  in  a  circle,  and  pawed 


A  BARK  UNDER   FULL   SAIL. 


the  earth  and  clawed  the  air,  and  threw  double  somersaults, 
sometimes  backward    and  sometimes  forward,   in    the  most 


NATURE'S    WONDERFUL    PROVISIONS.  267 

extraordinary  manner.  He  was  not  a  demonstrative  dog,  as 
a  general  thing,  but  rather  of  a  grave  and  serious  turn  of 
mind,  and  I  never  saw  him  take  so  much  interest  in  anything 
before.  He  finally  struck  out  over  the  mountains,  at  a  gait 
which  we  estimated  at  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  an 
hour,  and  he  is  going  yet.  This  was  about  nine  years  ago. 
We  look  for  what  is  left  of  him  along  here  every  day. 

A  white  man  cannot  drink  the  water  of  Mono  Lake,  for  it 
is  nearly  pure  lye.  It  is  said  that  the  Indians  in  the  vicinity 
drink  it  sometimes,  though.  It  is  not  improbable,  for  they 
are  among  the  purest  liars  I  ever  saw.  [There  wdll  be  no  ad 
ditional  charge  for  this  joke,  except  to  parties  requiring  an 
explanation  of  it.  This  joke  has  received  high  commendation 
from  some  of  the  ablest  minds  of  the  age.] 

There  are  no  fish  in  Mono  Lake — no  frogs,  no  snakes,  no 
polliwigs — nothing,  in  fact,  that  goes  to  make  life  desirable. 
Millions  of  wild  ducks  and  sea-gulls  swim  about  the  surface, 
but  no  living  thing  exists  under  the  surface,  except  a  white 
feathery  sort  of  worm,  one  half  an  inch  long,  which  looks  like 
a  bit  of  white  thread  frayed  out  at  the  sides.  If  you  dip  up  a 
gallon  of  water,  you  will  get  about  fifteen  thousand  of  these. 
They  give  to  the  water  a  sort  of  grayish-white  appearance. 
Then  there  is  a  fly,  which  looks  something  like  our  house  fly. 
These  settle  on  the  beach  to  eat  the  worms  that  wash  ashore 
— and  any  time,  you  can  see  there  a  belt  of  flies  an  inch'  deep 
and  six  feet  wide,  and  this  belt  extends  clear  around  the  lake 
— a  belt  of  flies  one  hundred  miles  long.  If  you  throw  a  stone 
among  them,  they  swarm  up  so  thick  that  they  look  dense,  like 
a  cloud.  You  can  hold  them  under  water  as  long  as  you  please 
—they  do  not  mind  it — they  are  only  proud  of  it.  "When  you 
let  them  go,  they  pop  up  to  the  surface  as  dry  as  a  patent  ofiice 
report,  and  walk  off  as  unconcernedly  as  if  they  had  been 
educated  especially  with  a  view  to  affording  instructive  enter 
tainment  to  man  in  that  particular  way.  Providence  leaves 
nothing  to  go  by  chance.  All  things  have  their  uses  and  their 
part  and  proper  place  in  Nature's  economy :  the  ducks  eat  the 
flies — the  flies  eat  the  worms — the  Indians  eat  all  three — the 


268  A    FREE    HOTEL    BUT    NO    CLERK. 

wild  cats  eat  the  Indians — the  white  folks  eat  the  wild  cats — • 
and  thus  all  things  are  lovely. 

Mono  Lake  is  a  hundred  miles  in  a  straight  line  from  the 
ocean — and  between  it  and  the  ocean  are  one  or  two  ranges 
of  mountains — yet  thousands  of  sea-gulls  go  there  every  season 
to  lay  their  eggs  and  rear  their  young.  One  would  as  soon 
expect  to  find  sea-gulls  in  Kansas.  And  in  this  connection  let 
us  observe  another  instance  of  Nature's  wisdom.  The  islands 
in  the  lake  being  merely  huge  masses  of  lava,  coated  over  with 
ashes  and  pumice-stone,  and  utterly  innocent  of  vegetation  or 
anything  that  would  burn ;  and  sea-gulls'  eggs  being  entirely 
useless  to  anybody  unless  they  be  cooked,  Nature  has  provided 
an  unfailing  spring  of  boiling  water  on  the  largest  island,  and 
you  can  put  your  eggs  in  there,  and  in  four  minutes  you  can 
boil  them  as  hard  as  any  statement  I  have  made  during  the  past 
fifteen  years.  Within  ten  feet  of  the  boiling  spring  is  a  spring 
of  pure  cold  water,  sweet  and  wholesome.  So,  in  that  island 


A  MODEL  BOARDING-HOUSE. 


you  get  your  board  and  washing  free  of  charge — and  if  nature 
had  gone  further  and  furnished  a  nice  American  hotel  clerk 
who  was  crusty  and  disobliging,  and  didn't  know  anything 
about  the  time  tables,  or  the  railroad  routes — or — anything — 
and  was  proud  of  it — I  would  not  wish  for  a  more  desirable 
boarding-house. 

Half  a   dozen    little    mountain    brooks  flow   into   Mono 
Lake,  but  not  a  stream  of  any  kind  flows  out  of  it.     It  neither 


FUNNY    INCIDENTS,  BUT   A   LITTLE    OVERDRAWN.      2C9 

rises  nor  falls,  apparently,  and  what  it  does  with  its  surplus 
water  is  a  dark  and  bloody  mystery. 

There  are  only  two  seasons  in  the  region  round  about 
Mono  Lake — and  these  are,  the  breaking  up  of  one  Winter 
and  the  beginning  of  the  next.  More  than  once  (in  Esme- 
ralda)  I  have  seen  a  perfectly  blistering  morning  open  up  with 
the  thermometer  at  ninety  degrees  at  eight  o'clock,  and  seen 
the  snow  fall  fourteen  inches  deep  and  that  same  identical 
thermometer  go  down  to  forty-four  degrees  under  shelter, 
before  nine  o'clock  at  night.  Under  favorable  circumstances 
it  snows  at  least  once  in  every  single  month  in  the  year,  in  the 
little  town  of  Mono.  So  uncertain  is  the  climate  in  Summer 
that  a  lady  who  goes  our  visiting  cannot  hope  to  be  prepared 
for  all  emergencies  uniess  she  takes  her  fan  under  one  arm  and 
her  snow  shoes  under  the  other.  When  they  have  a  Fourth 
of  July  procession  it  generally  snows  on  them,  and  they  do  say 
that  as  a  general  thing  when  a  man  calls  for  a  brandy  toddy 
there,  the  bar  keeper  chops  it  off  with  a  hatchet  and  wraps  it 
up  in  a  paper,  like  maple  sugar.  And  it  is  further  reported 
that  the  old  soakers  haven't  any  teeth — wore  them  out  eating 
gin  cocktails  and  brandy  punches.  I  do  not  endorse  that  state 
ment — I  simply  give  it  for  what  it  is  worth — and  it  is  worth — • 
well,  I  should  say,  millions,  to  any  man  who  can  believe  it 
without  straining  himself.  But  I  do  endorse  the  snow  on  the 
Fourth  of  July — because  I  know  that  to  be  true. 


CHAPTER   XXXIX. 

ABOUT  seven  o'clock  one  blistering  hot  morning — for  it 
was  now  dead  summer  time — Higbie  and  I  took  the 
boat  and  started  on  a  voyage  of  discovery  to  the  two  islands. 
"We  had  often  longed  to  do  this,  but  had  been  deterred  by  the 
fear  of  storms ;  for  they  were  frequent,  and  severe  enough  to 
capsize  an  ordinary  row-boat  like  ours  without  great  difficulty 
— and  once  capsized,  death  would  ensue  in  spite  of  the  bravest 
swimming,  for  that  venomous  water  would  eat  a  man's  eyes 
out  like  lire,  and  burn  him  out  inside,  too,  if  he  shipped  a  sea. 
It  was  called  twelve  miles,  straight  out  to  the  islands — a  long 
pull  and  a  warm  one — but  the  morning  was  so  quiet  and  sunny, 
and  the  lake  so  smooth  and  glassy  and  dead,  that  we  could  not 
resist  the  temptation.  So  we  filled  two  large  tin  canteens 
with  water  (since  we  were  not  acquainted  with  the  locality  of 
the  spring  said  to  exist  on  the  large  island),  and  started. 
Higbie's  brawny  muscles  gave  the  boat  good  speed,  but  by  the 
time  we  reached  our  destination  we  judged  that  we  had  pulled 
nearer  fifteen  miles  than  twelve. 

We  landed  on  the  big  island  and  went  ashore.  We  tried 
the  water  in  the  canteens,  now,  and  found  that  the  sun  had 
spoiled  it ;  it  was  so  brackish  that  we  could  not  drink  it ;  so 
we  poured  it  out  and  began  a  search  for  the  spring — for  thirst 
augments  fast  as  soon  as  it  is  apparent  that  one  has  no  means 
at  hand  of  quenching  it.  The  island  was  a  long,  moderately 
high  hill  of  ashes — nothing  but  gray  ashes  and  pumice-stone, 
in  which  we  sunk  to  our  knees  at  every  step — and  all  around 


AN    EXCURSION    ON    THE    ISLAND. 


271 


the  top  was  a  forbidding  wall  of  scorched  and  blasted  rocks. 
When  we  reached  the  top  and  got  within  the  wall,  we  found 
simply  a  shallow,  far-reaching  basin,  carpeted  with  ashes,  and 
here  and  there  a  patch  of  line  sand.  In  places,  picturesque 
jets  of  steam  shot  up  out  of  crevices,  giving  evidence  that 
although  this  ancient  crater  had  gone  out  of  active  business, 
there  was  still  some  fire  left  in  its  furnaces.  Close  to  one  of 
these  jets  of  steam  stood  the  only  tree  on  the  island — a  small 
pine  of  most  graceful  shape  and  most  faultless  symmetry ;  its 
color  was  a  brilliant  green,  for  the  steam  drifted  unceasingly 
through  its  branches  and  kept  them  always  moist.  It  con 
trasted  strangely  enough,  did  this  vigorous  and  beautiful  outcast, 
with  its  dead  and  dismal  surroundings.  It  was  like  a  cheerful 
spirit  in  a  mourn 
ing  household. 

We  hunted  for 
the  spring  every 
where,  traversing 
the  full  length  of 
the  island  (two  or 
three  miles),  and 
crossing  it  twice — 
climbing  ash-hills 
patiently,  and  then 
sliding  down  the 
other  side  in  a 
Bitting  posture, 
plowing  up  smoth 
ering  volumes  of 
gray  dust.  But  we 
found  nothing  but 
solitude,  ashes  and 
a  heart  -  breaking 
silence.  Finally  we  noticed  that  the  wind  had  risen,  and  we 
forgot  our  thirst  in  a  solicitude  of  greater  importance ;  for, 
the  lake  being  quiet,  we  had  not  taken  pains  about  secur 
ing  the  boat.  We  hurried  back  to  a  point  overlooking  our 


LIFE   AMID   DEATH. 


272  OUR    BOAT    ADRIFT    ON    THE    LAKE. 

landing  place,  and  then — but  mere  words  cannot  describe 
our  dismay — the  boat  was  gone !  The  chances  were  that 
there  was  not  another  boat  on  the  entire  lake.  \  The  situa 
tion  was  not  comfortable — in  truth,  to  speak  plainly,  it  was 
frightful.  We  were  prisoners  on  a  desolate  island,  in  aggra 
vating  proximity  to  friends  who  were  for  the  present  help 
less  to  aid  us;  and  what  was  still  more  uncomfortable  was 
the  reflection  that  we  had  neither  food  nor  water.  But  pres 
ently  we  sighted  the  boat.  It  was  drifting  along,  leisurely, 
about  fifty  yards  from  shore,  tossing  in  a  foamy  sea.  It 
drifted,  and  continued  to  drift,  but  at  the  same  safe  dis 
tance  from  land,  and  we  walked  along  abreast  it  and  waited 
for  fortune  to  favor  us.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  it  approached 
a  jutting  cape,  and  Iligbie  ran  ahead  and  posted  himself 
on  the  utmost  verge  and  prepared  for  the  assault.  If  we 
failed  there,  there  was  no  hope  for  us.  It  was  driving  gradu 
ally  shoreward  all  the  time,  now ;  but  whether  it  was  driving 
fast  enough  to  make  the  connection  or  not  was  the  momen 
tous  question.  When  it  got  within  thirty  steps  of  Higbie 
I  was  so  excited  that  I  fancied  I  could  hear  my  own  heart 
beat.  When,  a  little  later,  it  dragged  slowly  along  and 
seemed  about  to  go  by,  only  one  little  yard  out  of  reach,  it 
seemed  as  if  my  heart  stood  still ;  and  when  it  was  exactly 
abreast  him  and  began  to  widen  away,  and  he  still  standing 
like  a  watching  statue,  I  knew  my  heart  did  stop.  But  when 
he  gave  a  great  spring,  the  next  instant,  and  lit  fairly  in  the 
stern,  I  discharged  a  war-whoop  that  woke  the  solitudes ! 

But  it  dulled  my  enthusiasm,  presently,  when  he  told  me 
he  had  not  been  caring  whether  the  boat  came  within  jumping 
distance  or  not,  so  that  it  passed  within  eight  or  ten  yards  of 
him,  for  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  shut  his  eyes  and  mouth 
and  swim  that  trifling  distance.  Imbecile  that  I  was,  I  had  not 
thought  of  that.  It  was  only  a  long  swim  that  could  be  fatal. 

The  sea  was  running  high  and  the  storm  increasing.  It 
was  growing  late,  too — three  or  four  in  the  afternoon. 
Whether  to  venture  toward  the  mainland  or  not,  was  a  ques 
tion  of  some  moment.  But  we  were  so  distressed  by  thirst 


BILLOWS    OF    SOAP    SUDS. 


273 


that  we  decided  to  try  it,  and  so  Iligbie  fell  to  work  and  I 
took  the  steering-oar.  When  we  had  pulled  a  mile,  laboriously, 
we  were  evidently  in  serious  peril,  for  the  storm  had  greatly 


-  -  '         .--.- 

•=v.^r- 


A  JUMP  FOlt    LIFE. 


augmented ;  the  billows  ran  very  high  and  were  capped  with 
foaming  crests,  the  heavens  were  hung  with  black,  and  the 
wind  blew  with  great  fury.  We  would  have  gone  back,  now, 
but  we  did  not  dare  to  turn  the  boat  around,  because  as  soon 
as  she  got  in  the  trough  of  the  sea  she  would  upset,  of  course. 
Our  only  hope  lay  in  keeping  her  head-on  to  the  seas.  It  was 
hard  work  to  do  this,  she  plunged  so,  and  so  beat  and  belabored 
the  billows  with  her  rising  and  falling  bows.  Now  and  then 
one  of  Higbie's  oars  would  trip  on  the  top  of  a  wave,  and  the 
other  one  would  snatch  the  boat  half  around  in  spite  of  my 
cumbersome  steering  apparatus.  We  were  drenched  by  the 
sprays  constantly,  and  the  boat  occasionally  shipped  water. 
By  and  by,  powerful  as  my  comrade  was,  his  great  exertions 
began  to  tell  on  him,  and  he  was  anxious  that  I  should  change 
places  with  him  till  he  could  rest  a  little.  But  I  told  him 
this  was  impossible ;  for  if  the  steering  oar  were  dropped  a 
18f 


274  A    NUT    FOR    GEOLOGISTS. 

moment  while  we  changed,  the  boat  would  slue  around  into 
the  trough  of  the  sea,  capsize,  and  in  less  than  five  minutes  we 
would  have  a  hundred  gallons  of  soap-suds  in  us  and  be  eaten 
up  so  quickly  that  we  could  not  even  be  present  at  our  own 
inquest. 

But  things  cannot  last  always.  Just  as  the  darkness  shut 
down  we  came  booming  into  port,  head  on.  Iligbie  dropped 
his  oars  to  hurrah — I  dropped  mine  to  help — the  sea  gave  the 
boat  a  twist,  and  over  she  went ! 

The  agony  that  alkali  water  inflicts  on  bruises,  chafes  and 
blistered  hands,  is  unspeakable,  and  nothing  but  greasing  all 
over  will  modify  it — but  we  ate,  drank  and  slept  well,  that 
night,  notwithstanding. 

In  speaking  of  the  peculiarities  of  Mono  Lake,  I  ought  to 
have  mentioned  that  at  intervals  all  around  its  shores  stand 
picturesque  turret-looking  masses  and  clusters  of  a  whitish, 
coarse-grained  rock  that  resembles  inferior  mortar  dried  hard  ; 
and  if  one  breaks  oif  fragments  of  this  rock  he  will  find 
perfectly  shaped  and  thoroughly  petrified  gulls'  eggs  deeply 
imbedded  in  the  mass.  How  did  they  get  there  ?  I  simply 
state  the  fact — for  it  is  a  fact — and  leave  the  geological  reader 
to  crack  the  nut  at  his  leisure  and  solve  the  problem  after  his 
own  fashion. 

At  the  end  of  a  week  we  adjourned  to  the  Sierras  on  a 
fishing  excursion,  and  spent  several  days  in  camp  under  snowy 
Castle  Peak,  and  fished  successfully  for  trout  in  a  bright, 
miniature  lake  whose  surface  was  between  ten  and  eleven 
thousand  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea ;  cooling  ourselves 
during  the  hot  August  noons  by  sitting  on  snow  banks  ten  feet 
deep,  under  whose  sheltering  edges  fine  grass  and  dainty 
flowers  flourished  luxuriously ;  and  at  night  entertaining 
ourselves  by  almost  freezing  to  death.  Then  we  returned  to 
Mono  Lake,  and  finding  that  the  cement  excitement  was  over 
for  the  present,  packed  up  and  went  back  to  Esmeralda.  Mr. 
Ballou  reconnoitred  awhile,  and  not  liking  the  prospect,  set 
lut  alone  for  Humboldt. 

About  this  time  occurred  a  little  incident  which  has  always 


UNLOCKED    FOR    EXPLOSION. 


275 


had  a  sort  of  interest  to  me,  from  the  fact  that  it  came  so  near 
"  instigating  "  my  funeral.  At  a  time  when  an  Indian  attack 
had  been  expected,  the  citizens  hid  their  gunpowder  where  it 
would  be  safe  and  yet  convenient  to  hand  when  wanted.  A 
neighbor  of  ours  hid  six  cans  of  rifle  powder  in  the  bake-oven 
of  an  old  discarded  cooking  stove  which  stood  on  the  open 
ground  near  a  frame  out-house  or  shed,  and  from  and  after 
that  day  never  thought  of  it  again.  We  hired  a  half-tamed 
Indian  to  do  some  washing  for  us,  and  he  t^ok  up  quarters 
under  the  shed  with  his  tub.  The  ancient  stove  reposed  with 
in  six  feet  of  him,  and  before  his  face.  Finally  it  occurred  to 
him  that  hot  water  would  be  better  than  cold,  and  he  went 
out  and  fired  up  under  that  forgotten  powder  magazine  and 
set  on  a  kettle  of  water.  Then  he  returned  to  his  tub.  I 


1  STOVE  HEAP  GONE.' 


entered  the  shed  presently  and  threw  down  some  more  clothes, 
and  was  about  to  speak  to  him  when  the  stove  blew  up  with  a 
prodigious  crash,  and  disappeared,  leaving  not  a  splinter  be 
hind.  Fragments  of  it  fell  in  the  streets  full  two  hundred 
yards  away.  Nearly  a  third  of  the  shed  roof  over  our  heads 


276     AN   INDIAN'S   WORDS   FEW    BUT    EXPRESSIVE. 

was  destroyed,  and  one  of  the  stove  lids,  after  cutting  a  small 
stanchion  half  in  two  in  front  of  the  Indian,  whizzed  between 
us  and  drove  partly  through  the  weather-boarding  beyond.  I 
was  as  white  as  a  sheet  and  as  weak  as  a  kitten  and  speechless. 
But  the  Indian  betrayed  no  trepidation,  no  distress,  not  even 
discomfort.  He  simply  stopped  washing,  leaned  forward  and 
surveyed  the  clean,  blank  ground  a  moment,  and  then  re 
marked  : 

"  Mph  !  Dam  stove  heap  gone ! " — and  resumed  his  scrub 
bing  as  placidly  as  if  it  were  an  entirely  customary  thing  for  a 
stove  to  do.  I  will  explain,  that  "  heap  "  is  "  Injun-English  " 
for  "  very  much."  The  reader  will  perceive  the  exhaustive 
expressiveness  of  it  in  the  present  instance. 


OHAPTEE    XL. 

I  NOW  come  to  a  curious  episode — the  most  curious,  I 
think,  that  had  yet  accented  my  slothful,  valueless,  heed 
less  career.  Out  of  a  hillside  toward  the  upper  end  of  the 
town,  projected  a  wall  of  reddish  looking  quartz-croppings,  the 
exposed  comb  of  a  silver-bearing  ledge  that  extended  deep 
down  into  the  earth,  of  course.  It  was  owned  by  a  company 
entitled  the  "  Wide  West."  There  was  a  shaft  sixty  or  seventy 
feet  deep  on  the  under  side  of  the  croppings,  and  everybody 
was  acquainted  with  the  rock  that  came  from  it — and  tolerably 
rich  rock  it  was,  too,  but  nothing  extraordinary.  I  will  remark 
here,  that  although  to  the  inexperienced  stranger  all  the  quartz 
of  a  particular  "  district "  looks  about  alike,  an  old  resident  of 
the  camp  can  take  a  glance  at  a  mixed  pile  of  rock,  separate 
the  fragments  and  tell  you  which  mine  each  came  from,  as 
easily  as  a  confectioner  can  separate  and  classify  the  various 
kinds  and  qualities  of  candy  in  a  mixed  heap  of  the  article. 

All  at  once  the  town  was  thrown  into  a  state  of  extraor 
dinary  excitement.  In  mining  parlance  the  Wide  West  had 
"  struck  it  rich ! "  Everybody  went  to  see  the  new  developments, 
and  for  some  days  there  was  such  a  crowd  of  people  about  the 
Wide  West  shaft  that  a  stranger  would  have  supposed  there 
was  a  mass  meeting  in  session  there.  No  other  topic  was 
discussed  but  the  rich  strike,  and  nobody  thought  or  dreamed 
about  anything  else.  Every  man  brought  away  a  specimen, 
ground  it  up  in  a  hand  mortar,  washed  it  out  in  his  horn 
spoon,  and  glared  speechless  upon  the  marvelous  result.  It 


278  THE    "WIDE    WEST"    SILVER    LEDGE. 

was  not  hard  rock,  but  black,  decomposed  stuff  which  could 
be  crumbled  in  the  hand  like  a  baked  potato,  and  when  spread 
out  on  a  paper  exhibited  a  thick  sprinkling  of  gold  and  par 
ticles  of  " native"  silver.  Higbie  brought  a  handful  to  the 
cabin,  and  when  he  had  washed  it  out  his  amazement  was 
beyond  description.  "Wide  West  stock  soared  skywards.  It 
was  said  that  repeated  offers  had  been  made  for  it  at  a  thou 
sand  dollars  a  foot,  and  promptly  refused.  We  have  all  had 
the  "blues" — the  mere  sky-blues — but  mine  were  indigo,  now 
— because  I  did  not  own  in  the  Wide  West.  The  world 
seemed  hollow  to  me,  and  existence  a  grief.  I  lost  my  appe 
tite,  and  ceased  to  take  an  interest  in  anything.  Still  I  had 
to  stay,  and  listen  to  other  people's  rejoicings,  because  I  had 
no  money  to  get  out  of  the  camp  with. 

The  Wide  West  company  put  a  stop  to  the  carrying  away 
of  "  specimens,"  and  well  they  might,  for  every  handful  of  the 
ore  was  worth  a  sum  of  some  consequence.  To  show  the 
exceeding  value  of  the  ore,  I  will  remark  that  a  sixteen-hun- 
dred-pounds  parcel  of  it  was  sold,  just  as  it  lay,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  shaft,  at  one  dollar  a  pound  ;  and  the  .man  who  bought 
it  "packed"  it  on  mules  a  hundred  and  fifty  or  two  hundred 
miles,  over  the  mountains,  to  San  Francisco,  satisfied  that  it 
would  yield  at  a  rate  that  would  richly  compensate  him  for  his 
trouble.  The  Wide  West  people  also  commanded  their  foreman 
to  refuse  any  but  their  own  operatives  permission  to  enter  the 
mine  at  any  time  or  for  any  purpose.  I  kept  up  my  "  blue" 
meditations  and  Higbie  kept  up  a  deal  of  thinking,  too,  but 
of  a  different  sort.  He  puzzled  over  the  "  rock,"  examined  it 
with  a  glass,  inspected  it  in  different  lights  and  from  different 
points  of  view,  and  after  each  experiment  delivered  himself,  in 
soliloquy,  of  one  and  the  same  unvarying  opinion  in  the  same 
unvarying  formula : 

"  It  i&not  Wide  West  rock  !  " 

He  said  once  or  twice  that  he  meant  to  have  a  look  into  the 
Wide  West  shaft  if  he  got  shot  for  it.  I  was  wretched,  and 
did  not  care  whether  he  got  a  look  into  it  or  not.  He  failed 
that  day,  and  tried  again  at  night ;  failed  again ;  got  up  at 


HIGBIE    "INTERVIEWS"    THE    MINE. 


279 


dawn  and  tried,  and  failed  again.  Then  lie  lay  in  ambush  in 
the  sage  brush  hour  after  hour,  waiting  for  the  two  or  three 
hands  to  adjourn  to  the  shade  of  a  boulder  for  dinner ;  mado 
a  start  once,  but  was  premature — one  of  the  men  came  back 
for  something ;  tried  it  again,  but  when  almost  at  the  mouth 
of  the  shaft,  another  of  the  men  rose  up  from  behind  the  boul 
der  as  if  to  reconnoitre,  and  he  dropped  on  the  ground  and  lay 
quiet;  presently  he  crawled  on  his  hands  and  knees  to  the 
mouth  of  the  shaft,  gave  a  quick  glance  around,  then  seized 
the  rope  and  slid  down 
the  shaft.  He  disap 
peared  in  the  gloom  of 
a  "  side  drift  "  just  as  a 
head  appeared  in  the 
mouth  of  the  shaft  and 
somebody  shouted 
"Hello!"  — which  he 
did  not  answer.  He  was 
not  disturbed  any  more. 
An  hour  later  he  en 
tered  the  cabin,  hot,  red, 
and  ready  to  burst  with 
smothered  excitement, 
and  exclaimed  in  a  stage  whis 
per: 

"  I    knew    it !      We   are 
rich !     IT'S  A  BLIND  LEAD  !  " 

I  thought  the  very  earth 
reeled  under  me.  Doubt  — 
conviction — doubt  again — ex 
ultation —  hope,  amazement, 
belief,  unbelief — every  emo 
tion  imaginable  swept  in  wild  procession  through  my  heart 
and  brain,  and  I  could  not  speak  a  word.  After  a  moment 
or  two  of  this  mental  fury,  I  shook  myself  to  rights,  and 
said : 

"  Say  it  again !  " 


INTERVIEWING  THE   "WIDE  WEST." 


280 


BLIND    LEAD"    DISCOVERED. 


"  It's  a  blind  lead  !  " 

"  CaL,  let's  —  let's  burn  the  house  —  or  kill  somebody  !  Let's 
get  out  where  there's  room  to  hurrah  !  But  what  is  the  use? 
It  is  a  hundred  times  too  good  to  be  true." 

"  It's  a  blind  lead,  for  a  million  !  —  hanging  wall  —  foot  wall 
•  —  clay  casings  —  everything  complete  !  "  He  swung  his  hat  and 
gave  three  cheers,  and  I  cast  doubt  to  the  winds  and  chimed 
in  with  a  will.  For  I  was  worth  a  million  dollars,  and  did 
not  care  u  whether  school  kept  or  not  !  " 

But  perhaps  I  ought  to  explain.     A  "blind  lead"  is   a 

lead  or  ledge  that 
does  not  "  crop  out  " 
above  the  surface.  A 
miner  does  not  know 
where  to  look  for 
such  leads,  but  they 
are  often  stumbled 
upon  by  accident  in 
the  course  of  driving 
a  tunnel  or  sinking  a 
shaft.  Higbie  knew 
the  Wide  West  rock 
perfectly  well,  and 
the  more  he  had  ex 
amined  the  new  de 
velopments  the  more 
he  was  satisfied  that 
the  ore  could  not 
have  come  from  the 
Wide  West  vein. 

And  so  had  it  occurred  to  him  alone,  of  all  the  camp,  that 
there  was  a  blind  lead  down  in  the  shaft,  and  that  even  the 
Wide  West  people  themselves  did  not  suspect  it.  He  was 
right.  When  he  went  down  the  shaft,  he  found  that  the 
blind  lead  held  its  independent  way  through  the  Wide  West 
vein,  cutting  it  diagonally,  and  that  it  was  enclosed  in  its  own 
well-defined  casing-rocks  and  clay.  Hence  it  was  public  prop- 


WORTH  A  MILLION. 


"UP    IN    A    BALLOON."— RICH    AT    LAST.  281 

erty.  Both  leads  being  perfectly  well  defined,  it  was  easy  for 
any  miner  to  see  which  one  belonged  to  the  Wide  West  and 
which  did  not. 

We  thought  it  well  to  have  a  strong  friend,  and  therefore 
we  brought  the  foreman  of  the  Wide  West  to  our  cabin  that 
night  and  revealed  the  great  surprise  to  him.  Higbie  said : 

"  We  are  going  to  take  possession  of  this  blind  lead,  record 
it  and  establish  ownership,  and  then  forbid  the  Wide  West 
company  to  take  out  any  more  of  the  rock.  You  cannot  help 
your  company  in  this  matter — nobody  can  help  them.  I  will 
go  into  the  shaft  with  you  and  prove  to  your  entire  satisfaction 
that  it  is  a  blind  lead.  Now  we  propose  to  take  you  in  with 
us,  and  claim  the  blind  lead  in  our  three  names.  What  do 
you  say  ? " 

What  could  a  man  say  who  had  an  opportunity  to  simply 
stretch  forth  his  hand  and  take  possession  of  a  fortune  without 
risk  of  any  kind  and  without  wronging  any  one  or  attaching 
the  least  taint  of  dishonor  to  his  name  1  He  could  only  say, 
"Agreed." 

The  notice  was  put  up  that  night,  and  duly  spread  upon 
the  recorder's  books  before  ten  o'clock.  We  claimed  two  hun 
dred  feet  each — six  hundred  feet  in  all — the  smallest  and  com- 
pactest  organization  in  the  district,  and  the  easiest  to  manage. 

No  one  can  be  so  thoughtless  as  to  suppose  that  we  slept,  that 
night.  Higbie  and  I  went  to  bed  at  midnight,  but  it  was  only 
to  lie  broad  awake  and  think,  dream,  scheme.  The  floorless, 
tumble-down  cabin  was  a  palace,  the  ragged  gray  blankets  silk, 
the  furniture  rosewood  and  mahogany.  Each  new  splendor 
that  burst  out  of  my  visions  of  the  future  whirled  me  bodily 
over  in  bed  or  jerked  me  to  a  sitting  posture  just  as  if  an  elec 
tric  battery  had  been  applied  to  me.  We  shot  fragments  of 
conversation  back  and  forth  at  each  other.  Once  Higbie  said : 

"  When  are  you  going  home — to  the  States  ? " 

"  To-morrow  ! " — with  an  evolution  or  two,  ending  with  a 
sitting  position.  "  Well — no — but  next  month,  at  furthest." 

"  We'll  go  in  the  same  steamer." 

«  Agreed." 


282 


HOW  SHALL  WE  SPEND  OUR  MONET? 


A  pause. 

"  Steamer  of  the  10th  ? " 
"  Yes.     No,  the  1st." 
"All  right." 
Another  pause. 

"  Where  are  yon  going  to  live  ? "  said  Higbie. 
"  San  Francisco." 
"  That's  me !  " 
Pause. 

"  Too  high — too  much  climbing  " — from  Higbie. 
"What  is?" 

"  I  was  thinking  of  Russian  Hill — building  a  house  up 
there." 

"  Too  much  climbing?     Shan't  you  keep  a  carriage ? " 

"  Of  course.     I  forgot  that." 

Pause. 

"  Cal.,  what  kind  of  a  house  are  you  going  to  build  ? " 


MILLIONAIRES  LATINO  PLANS. 


"  I  was  thinking  about  that.     Three-story  and  an  attic." 

"But  what  kind?" 

"  Well,  I  don't  hardly  know.     Brick,  I  suppose." 


WE    TIRE    OF    WEALTH  — AND    PLAY    CRIBBAGE.     283 

"  Brick— bosh." 

"  Why  ?     What  is  your  idea ? " 

"  Brown  stone  front — French  plate  glass — billiard-room  off 
the  dining-room — statuary  and  paintings — shrubbery  and  two- 
acre  grass  plat — greenhouse — iron  dog  on  the  front  stoop — 
gray  horses — landau,  and  a  coachman  with  a  bug  on  his  hat !  " 

*"  By  George  ! " 

A  long  pause. 

"  Cal.,  when  are  you  going  to  Europe  ? " 

"  Well— I  hadn't' thought  of  that.     When  are  you  ? " 

"  In  the  Spring." 

"  Going  to  be  gone  all  summer  ? " 

"  All  summer !     I  shall  remain  there  three  years." 

"  No — but  are  you  in  earnest  ? " 

"Indeed  I  am." 

"  I  will  go  along  too." 

"  Why  of  course  you  will." 

"  What  part  of  Europe  shall  you  go  to  ?  " 

"  All  parts.  France,  England,  Germany — Spain,  Italy, 
Switzerland,  Syria,  Greece,  Palestine,  Arabia,  Persia,  Egypt — 
all  over — everywhere." 

"  I'm  agreed." 

"All  right." 

"  Won't  it  be  a  swell  trip  ! " 

"  We'll  spend  forty  or  fifty  thousand  dollars  trying  to  make 
it  one,  anyway." 

Another  long  pause. 

"  Higbie,  we  owe  the  butcher  six  dollars,  and  he  has  been 
threatening  to  stop  our — 

"  Hang  the  butcher !  " 

"  Amen." 

And  so  it  went  on.  By  three  o'clock  we  found  it  was  no 
use,  and  so  we  got  up  and  played  cribbage  and  smoked  pipes 
till  sunrise.  It  was  my  week  to  cook.  I  always  hated  cook 
ing — now,  I  abhorred  it. 

The  news  was  all  over  town.  The  former  excitement  was 
great — this  one  was  greater  still.  I  walked  the  streets  serene 


284:  DUTY    BEFORE    PLEASURE. 

and  happy.  Iligbie  said  the  foreman  had  been  offered  two 
hundred  thousand  dollars  for  his  third  of  the  mine.  I  said  I 
would  like  to  see  myself  selling  for  any  such  price.  My  ideas 
were  lofty.  My  figure  was  a  million.  Still,  I  honestly  believe 
that  if  I  had  been  offered  it,  it  would  have  had  no  other  effect 
than  to  make  me  hold  off  for  more. 

I  found  abundant  enjoyment  in  being  rich.  A  man  offered 
me  a  three-hundred-dollar  horse,  and  wanted  to  take  my  sim 
ple,  unendorsed  note  for  it.  That  brought  the  most  realizing 
sense  I  had  yet  had  that  I  was  actually  rich,  beyond  shadow 
of  doubt.  It  was  followed  by  numerous  other  evidences  of  a 
similar  nature — among  which  I  may  mention  the  fact  of  the 
butcher  leaving  us  a  double  supply  of  meat  and  saying  nothing 
about  money. 

By  the  laws  of  the  district,  the  "  locators  "  or  claimants  of 
a  ledge  were  obliged  to  do  a  fair  and  reasonable  amount  of 
work  on  their  new  property  within  ten  days  after  the  date  of 
the  location,  or  the  property  was  forfeited,  and  anybody  could 
go  and  seize  it  that  chose.  So  we  determined  to  go  to  work 
the  next  day.  About  the  middle  of  the  afternoon,  as  I  was 
coming  out  of  the  post  office,  I  met  a  Mr.  Gardiner,  who  told 
me  that  Capt.  John  ^Nye  was  lying  dangerously  ill  at  his  place 
(the  "  Nine-Mile  Ranch  "),  and  that  he  and  his  wife  were  not 
able  to  give  him  nearly  as  much  care  and  attention  as  his  case 
demanded.  I  said  ii  he  would  wait  for  me  a  moment,  I  would 
go  down  and  help  in  the  sick  room.  I  ran  to  the  cabin  to  tell 
Iligbie.  He  was  not  there,  but  I  left  a  note  on  the  table  for 
him,  and  a  few  minutes  later  I  left  town  in  Gardiner's  wagon. 


CHAPTEE   XLI. 

/CAPTAIN  NYE  was  very  ill  indeed,  with  spasmodic 
V_y  rheumatism.  But  the  old  gentleman  was,  himself — 
which  is  to  say,  he  was  kind-hearted  and  agreeable  when  com 
fortable,  but  a  singularly  violent  wild-cat  when  things  did  not 
go  well.  He  would  be  smiling  along  pleasantly  enough,  when 
a  sudden  spasm  of  his  disease  would  take  him  and  he  would 
go  out  of  his  smile  into  a  perfect  fury.  He  would  groan  and 
wail  and  howl  with  the  anguish,  and  fill  up  the  odd  chinks 
with  the  most  elaborate  profanity  that  strong  convictions  and 
a  fine  fancy  could  contrive.  With  fair  opportunity  he  could 
swear  very  well  and  handle  his  adjectives  with  considerable 
judgment ;  but  when  the  spasm  was  on  him  it  was  painful  to 
listen  to  him,  he  was  so  awkward.  However,  I  had  seen  him 
nurse  a  sick  man  himself  and  put  up  patiently  with  the  incon 
veniences  of  the  situation,  and  consequently  I  was  willing  that 
he  should  have  full  license  now  that  his  own  turn  had  come. 
He  could  not  disturb  me,  with  all  his  raving  and  ranting,  for 
my  mind  had  work  on  hand,  and  it  labored  on  diligently, 
night  and  day,  whether  my  hands  were  idle  or  employed.  I 
was  altering  and  amending  the  plans  for  my  house,  and  think 
ing  over  the  propriety  of  having  the  billiard-room  in  the  attic, 
instead  of  on  the  same  floor  with  the  dining-room ;  also,  I  was 
trying  to  decide  between  green  and  blue  for  the  upholstery  of 
the  drawing-room,  for,  although  my  preference  was  blue  I 
feared  it  was  a  color  that  would  be  too  easily  damaged  by  dust 
and  sunlight ;  likewise  while  I  was  content  to  put  the  coach- 


286  DAY    DREAM    OF    A    MILLIONAIRE 

man  in  a  modest  livery,  I  was  uncertain  about  a  footman — I 
needed  one,  and  was  even  resolved  to  have  one,  but  wished  he 
could  properly  appear  and  perform  his  functions  out  of  livery, 
for  I  somewhat  dreaded  so  much  show ;  and  yet,  inasmuch  as 
my  late  grandfather  had  had  a  coachman  and  such  tilings,  but 
no  liveries,  I  felt  rather  drawn  to  beat  him  ; — or  beat  his  ghost, 
at  any  rate ;  I  was  also  systematizing  the  European  trip,  and 
managed  to  get  it  all  laid  out,  as  to  route  and  length  of  time 
to  be  devoted  to  it — everything,  with  one  exception — namely, 
whether  to  cross  the  desert  from  Cairo  to  Jerusalem  per  camel, 
or  go  by  sea  to  Beirut,  and  thence  down  through  the  country 
per  caravan.  Meantime  I  was  writing  to  the  friends  at  home 
every  day,  instructing  them  concerning  all  my  plans  and  in 
tentions,  and  directing  them  to  look  up  a  handsome  homestead 
for  my  mother  and  agree  upon  a  price  for  it  against  my  com 
ing,  and  also  directing  them  to  sell  my  share  of  the  Tennessee 
land  and  tender  the  proceeds  to  the  widows'  and  orphans' 
fund  of  the  typographical  union  of  which  I  had  long  been  a 
member  in  good  standing.  [This  Tennessee  land  had  been  in 
the  possession  of  the  family  many  years,  and  promised  to  con 
fer  high  fortune  upon  us  some  day ;  it  still  promises  it,  but  in 
a  less  violent  way.] 

When  I  had  been  nursing  the  Captain  nine  days  he  was 
somewhat  better,  but  very  feeble.  During  the  afternoon  we 
lifted  him  into  a  chair  and  gave  him  an  alcoholic  vapor  bath, 
and  then  set  about  putting  him  on  the  bed  again.  We  had 
to  be  exceedingly  careful,  for  the  least  jar  produced  pain. 
Gardiner  had  his  shoulders  and  I  his  legs ;  in  an  unfortunate 
moment  I  stumbled  and  the  patient  fell  heavily  on  the  bed  in 
an  agony  of  torture.  I  never  heard  a  man  swear  so  in  my  life. 
He  raved  like  a  maniac,  and  tried  to  snatch  a  revolver  from 
the  table — but  I  got  it.  He  ordered  me  out  of  the  house,  and 
swore  a  world  of  oaths  that  he  would  kill  me  wherever  he 
caught  me  when  he  got  on  his  feet  again.  It  was  simply  a 
passing  fury,  and  meant  nothing.  I  knew  he  would  forget  it  in 
an  hour,  and  maybe  be  sorry  for  it,  too ;  but  it  angered  me  a 
little,  at  the  moment.  So  much  so,  indeed,  that  I  determined 


A    FIT    SUBJECT    FOR    SYMPATHY. 


287 


to  go  back  to  Esmeralda.  I  thought  he  was  able  to  get  along 
alone,  now,  since  he  was  on  the  war  path.  I  took  supper,  and 
as  soon  as  the  moon  rose,  began  my  nine-mile  journey,  on  foot. 


FSB 


DANGEROUSLY    SICK. 


Even  millionaires  needed  no  horses,  in  those  days,  for  a  mere 
nine-mile  jaunt  without  baggage. 

As  I  "raised  the  hill"  overlooking  the  town,  it  lacked 
fifteen  minutes  of  twelve.  I  glanced  at  the  hill  over  beyond 
the  canyon,  and  in  the  bright  moonlight  saw  what  appeared 
to  be  about  half  the  population  of  the  village  massed  on  and 
around  the  Wide  West  croppings.  My  heart  gave  an  exulting 
bound,  and  I  said  to  myself,  "  They  have  made  a  new  strike 
to-night — and  struck  it  richer  than  ever,  no  doubt."  I  started 
over  there,  but  gave  it  up.  I  said  the  "  strike  "  would  keep, 
and  I  had  climbed  hills  enough  for  one  night.  I  went  on 
down  through  the  town,  and  as  I  was  passing  a  little  German 
bakery,  a  woman  ran  out  and  begged  me  to  come  in  and  help 
her.  She  said  her  husband  had  a  fit.  I  went  in,  and  judged 
she  was  right — he  appeared  to  have  a  hundred  of  them,  com 
pressed  into  one.  Two  Germans  were  there,  trying  to  hold 
him,  and  not  making  much  of  a  success  of  it.  I  ran  up  the 


288 


OUR    BALLOON    BURSTS. 


street  half  a  block  or  so  and  routed  out  a  sleeping  doctor, 
brought  him  down  half  dressed,  and  we  four  wrestled  with 
the  maniac,  and  doctored,  drenched  and  bled  him,  for  more 
than  an  hour,  and  the  poor  German  woman  did  the  crying. 
He  grew  quiet,  now,  and  the  doctor  and  I  withdrew  and  left 
him  to  his  friends. 

It  was  a  little  after  one  o'clock.  As  I  entered  the  cabin 
door,  tired  but  jolly,  the  dingy  light  of  a  tallow  candle  revealed 
Higbie,  sitting  by  the  pine  table  gazing  stupidly  at  my  note, 
which  he  held  in  his  fingers,  and  looking  pale,  old,  and  hag 
gard.  I  halted,  and 
looked  at  him.  He 
looked  at  me,  stol 
idly.  I  said : 

"Higbie,  what— 
what  is  it?" 

"We're  ruined — 
we  didn't  do  the 
work  —  THE  BLIND 
LEAD'S  EELOCATED  ! " 
It  was  enough.  I 
sat  down  sick, 
grieved —  broken- 
hearted,  indeed.  A 
minute  before,  I  was 
rich  and  brimful  of 
vanity  ;  I  was  a  pau 
per  now,  and  very 
meek.  We  sat  still 
an  hour,  busy  with 
thought,  busy  with  vain  and  useless  self-upbraidings,  busy  with 
"  Why  didn't  I  do  this,  and  why  didn't  I  do  that,"  but  neither 
spoke  a  word.  Then  we  dropped  into  mutual  explanations,  and 
the  mystery  was  cleared  aw^ay.  It  came  out  that  Higbie  had 
depended  on  me,  as  I  had  on  him,  and  as  both  of  us  had  on 
the  foreman.  The  folly  of  it !  It  was  the  first  time  that  ever 
staid  and  steadfast  Higbie  had  left  an  important  matter  to 
chance  or  failed  to  be  true  to  his  full  share  of  a  responsibility. 


\VOliTII   NOTHING. 


UNAVAILABLE    REGRETS   AND   EXPLANATIONS.       289 

But  he  had  never  seen  my  note  till  this  moment,  and  this 
moment  was  the  first  time  he  had  been  in  the  cabin 
since  the  day  he  had  seen  me  last.  He,  also,  had  left  a  note 
for  me,  on  that  same  fatal  afternoon — had  ridden  up  on  horse 
back,  and  looked  through  the  window,  and  being  in  a  hurry 
and  not  seeing  me,  had  tossed  the  note  into  the  cabin  through 
a  broken  pane.  Here  it  was,  on  the  floor,  where  it  had  re 
mained  undisturbed  for  nine  days : 

"  Don't  fail  to  do  the  work  before  the  ten  days  expire.  W.  has  passed 
through  and  given  me  notice.  I  am  to  join  him  at  Mono  Lake,  and  we  shall 
go  on  from  there  to-night.  He  says  he  will  find  it  this  time,  sure.  CAL." 

"W."  meant  Whiteman,  of  course.  That  thrice  accursed 
"  cement ! " 

That  was  the  way  of  it.  An  old  miner,  like  Higbie,  could 
no  more  withstand  the  fascination  of  a  mysterious  mining 
excitement  like  this  "cement"  foolishness,  than  he  could  re 
frain  from  eating  when  he  was  famishing.  Higbie  had  been 
dreaming  about  the  marvelous  cement  for  months ;  and  now, 
against  his  better  judgment,  he  had  gone  off  and  u  taken  the 
chances  "  on  my  keeping  secure  a  mine  worth  a  million  undis 
covered  cement  veins.  They  had  not  been  followed  this  time. 
His  riding  out  of  town  in  broad  daylight  was  such  a  common 
place  thing  to  do  that  it  had  not  attracted  any  attention.  He 
said  they  prosecuted  their  search  in  the  fastnesses  of  the 
mountains  during  nine  days,  without  success ;  they  could  not 
find  the  cement.  Then  a  ghastly  fear  came  over  him  that 
something  might  have  happened  to  prevent  the  doing  of  the 
necessary  work  to  hold  the  blind  lead  (though  indeed  he 
thought  such  a  thing  hardly  possible),  and  forthwith  he  started 
home  with  all  speed.  He  would  have  reached  Esmeralda  in 
time,  but  his  horse  broke  down  and  he  had  to  walk  a  great 
part  of  the  distance.  And  so  it  happened  that  as  he  came 
into  Esmeralda  by  one  road,  I  entered  it  by  another.  His 
was  the  superior  energy,  however,  for  he  went  straight  to  the 
Wide  West,  instead  of  turning  aside  as  I  had  done — and  he 
arrived  there  about  five  or  ten  minutes  too  late !  The  "  notice  " 


290 


THE    THIRD    PARTNER    PLATS    TO    WIN. 


was  already  up,  the  "relocation"  of  our  mine  completed  be 
yond  recall,  and  the  crowd  rapidly  dispersing.  He  learned 
some  facts  before  he  left  the  ground.  The  foreman  had  not 
been  seen  about  the  streets  since  the  night  we  had  located  the 
mine — a  telegram  had  called  him  to  California  on  a  matter  of 
life  and  death,  it  was  said.  At  any  rate  he  had  done  no  work 
and  the  watchful  eyes  of  the  community  were  taking  note  of 
the  fact.  At  midnight  of  this  woful  tenth  day,  the  ledge 
would  be  "relocatable,"  and  by  eleven  o'clock  the  hill  was 
black  with  men  prepared  to  do  the  relocating.  That  was  the 
crowd  I  had  seen  when  I  fancied  a  new  "strike"  had  been 


lade — idiot  that  I  was. 
[We  three  had  the  same 
right  to  relocate  the  lead 
that  other  people  had, 
provided  we  were  quick 
enough.]  As  midnight 
was  announced,  fourteen 
men,  duly  armed  and  ready 
to  back  their  proceedings, 
put  up  their  "  notice  "  and  proclaimed  their  ownership  of  the 
blind  lead,  under  the  new  name  of  the  "  Johnson."  But  A. 
D.  Allen  our  partner  (the  foreman)  put  in  a  sudden  appearance 
about  that  time,  with  a  cocked  revolver  in  his  hand,  and  said 
his  name  must  be  added  to  the  list,  or  he  would  "  thin  out  the 
Johnson  company  some."  He  was  a  manly,  splendid,  de- 


ENFORCING  A  COMPROMISE. 


THE    THREE    MILLIONAIRES.  291 

termined  fellow,  and  known  to  be  as  good  as  his  word,  and 
therefore  a  compromise  was  effected.  They  put  in  his  name 
for  a  hundred  feet,  reserving  to  themselves  the  customary  two 
hundred  feet  each.  Such  was  the  history  of  the  night's 
events,  as  Higbie  gathered  from  a  friend  on  the  way  home. 

Higbie  and  I  cleared  out  on  a  new  mining  excitement  the 
next  morning,  glad  to  get  away  from  the  scene  of  our  suffer 
ings,  and  after  a  month  or  two  of  hardship  and  disappoint 
ment,  returned  to  Esmeralda  once  more.  Then  we  learned 
that  the  Wide  West  and  the  Johnson  companies  had  consoli 
dated  ;  that  the  stock,  thus  united,  comprised  five  thousand 
feet,  or  shares ;  that  the  foreman,  apprehending  tiresome  liti 
gation,  and  considering  such  a  huge  concern  unwieldy,  had 
sold  his  hundred  feet  for  ninety  thousand  dollars  in  gold  and 
gone  home  to  the  States  to  enjoy  it.  If  the  stock  was  worth 
such  a  gallant  figure,  with  five  thousand  shares  in  the  corpora 
tion,  it  makes  me  dizzy  to  think  what  it  would  have  been 
worth  with  only  our  original  six  hundred  in  it.  It  was  the 
difference  between  six  hundred  men  owning  a  house  and  five 

O 

thousand  owning  it.  We  would  have  been  millionaires  if  we 
had  only  worked  with  pick  and  spade  one  little  day  on  our 
property  and  so  secured  our  ownership ! 

It  reads  like  a  wild  fancy  sketch,  but  the  evidence  of  many 
witnesses,  and  likewise  that  of  the  official  records  of  Esmeralda 
District,  is  easily  obtainable  in  proof  that  it  is  a  true  history. 
I  can  always  have  it  to  say  that  I  was  absolutely  and  unqr^c  - 
tionably  worth  a  million  dollars,  once,  for  ten  days. 

A  year  ago  my  esteemed  and  in  every  way  estimable  ola 
millionaire  partner,  Higbie,  wrote  me  from  an  obscure  little 
mining  camp  in  California  that  after  nine  or  ten  years  of  buf 
ferings  and  hard  striving,  he  was  at  last  in  a  position  where 
he  could  command  twenty-five  hundred  dollars,  and  said  he 
meant  to  go  into  the  fruit  business  in  a  modest  way.  How 
such  a  thought  would  have  insulted  him  the  night  we  lay  in 
our  cabin  planning  European  trips  and  brown  stone  houses  on 
Kussian  Hill ! 


CHAPTEE   XLII. 

WHAT  to  do  next  ? 
It  was  a  momentous  question.  I  had  gone  out  into 
the  world  to  shift  for  myself,  at  the  age  of  thirteen  (for  my 
father  had  endorsed  for  friends ;  and  although  he  left  us  a 
sumptuous  legacy  of  pride  in  his  fine  Yirginian  stock  and  its 
national  distinction,  I  presently  found  that  I  could  not  live  on 
that  alone  without  occasional  bread  to  wash  it  down  with).  I 
had  gained  a  livelihood  in  various  vocations,  but  had  not 
dazzled  anybody  with  my  successes ;  still  the  list  was  before  me, 
and  the  amplest  liberty  in  the  matter  of  choosing,  provided  I 
wanted  to  work — which  I  did  not,  after  being  so  wealthy.  I 
had  once  been  a  grocery  clerk,  for  one  day,  but  had  consumed 
BO  much  sugar  in  that  time  that  I  was  relieved  from  further 
duty  by  the  proprietor ;  said  he  wanted  me  outside,  so  that  he 
could  have  my  custom.  I  had  studied  law  an  entire  week, 
and  then  given  it  up  because  it  was  so  prosy  and  tiresome.  I 
had  engaged  briefly  in  the  study  of  blacksmithing,  but  wasted 
so  much  time  trying  to  fix  the  bellows  so  that  it  would  blow 
itself,  that  the  master  turned  me  adrift  in  disgrace,  and  told 
me  I  would  come  to  no  good.  I  had  been  a  bookseller's  clerk 
for  awhile,  but  the  customers  bothered  me  so  much  I  could 
not  read  with  any  comfort,  and  so  the  proprietor  gave  me  a 
furlough  and  forgot  to  put  a  limit  to  it.  I  had  clerked  in  a 
drug  store  part  of  a  summer,  but  my  prescriptions  were  un 
lucky,  and  we  appeared  to  sell  more  stomach  pumps  than  soda 
water.  So  I  had  to  go.  I  had  made  of  myself  a  tolerable 
printer,  under  the  impression  that  I  would  be  another  Frank- 


OBSTACLES    TO    MY    SUCCESS. 


293 


ONE  OF  MT  FAILURES. 


lin  some  day,  but  somehow  had  missed  the  connection  thus  far. 
There  was  no  berth  open  in  the  Esmeralda  Union,  and  besides 
I  had  always  been 
such  a  slow  compos 
itor  that  I  looked 
with  envy  upon  the 
achievements  of  ap 
prentices  of  two 
years'  standing ;  and 
when  I  took  a 
"take,"  foremen 
were  in  the  habit 
of  suggesting  that 
it  would  be  wanted 
"some  time  during 
the  year."  I  was  a 
good  average  St. 
Louis  and  New 
Orleans  pilot  and  by 
no  means  ashamed  of  my  abilities  in  that  line ;  wages  were 
two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  month  and  no  board  to  pay, 
and  I  did  long  to  stand  behind  a  wheel  again  and  never  roam 
any  more — but  I  had  been  making  such  an  ass  of  myself  lately 
in  grandiloquent  letters  home  about  my  blind  lead  and  my 
European  excursion  that  I  did  what  many  and  many  a  poor 
disappointed  miner  had  done  before ;  said  "  It  is  all  over  with 
me  now,  and  I  will  never  go  back  home  to  be  pitied — and 
snubbed."  I  had  been  a  private  secretary,  a  silver  miner  and 
a  silver  mill  operative,  and  amounted  to  less  than  nothing  in 
each,  and  now — 

What  to  do  next  ? 

I  yielded  to  Higbie's  appeals  and  consented  to  try  the 
mining  once  more.  We  climbed  far  up  on  the  mountain  side 
and  went  to  work  on  a  little  rubbishy  claim  of  ours  that  had  a 
shaft  on  it  eight  feet  deep.  Higbie  descended  into  it  and 
worked  bravely  with  his  pick  till  he  had  loosened  up  a  deal 
of  rock  and  dirt  and  then  I  went  down  with  a  long-handled 


294 


I    TRY    A    NEW    PATH. 


shovel  (the  most  awkward  invention  yet  contrived  by  man)  to 
throw  it  out.  You  must  brace  the  shovel  forward  with  the 
side  of  your  knee  till  it  is  full,  and  then,  with  a  skilful  toss, 
throw  it  backward  over  your  left  shoulder.  I  made  the  toss, 
and  landed  the  mess  just  on  the  edge  of  the  shaft  and  it  all 
came  back  on  my  head  and  down  the  back  of  my  neck.  I 

never  said  a  word,  but 
climbed  out  and  walked 
home.  I  inwardly  resolved 
that  I  would  starve  before  I 
would  make  a  target  of  my 
self  and  shoot  rubbish  at  it 
with  a  long-handled  shovel. 
I  sat  down,  in  the  cabin, 
and  gave  myself  up  to  solid 
misery — so  to  speak.  Now 
in  pleasanter  days  I  had 
amused  myself  with  writing 
letters  to  the  chief  paper  of 
the  Territory,  the  Virginia 
Daily  Territorial  Enter 
prise,  and  had  always  been 
surprised  when  they  ap 
peared  in  print.  My  good 
opinion  of  the  editors  had 
steadily  declined ;  for  it 
seemed  to  me  that  they  might  have  found  something  better  to 
fill  up  with  than  my  literature.  I  had  found  a  letter  in  the 
post  office  as  I  came  home  from  the  hill  side,  and  finally  I 
opened  it.  Eureka !  [I  never  did  know  what  Eureka  meant, 
but  it  seems  to  be  as  proper  a  word  to  heave  in  as  any  when 
no  other  that  sounds  pretty  offers.]  It  was  a  deliberate  offer 
to  me  of  Twenty-Five  Dollars  a  week  to  come  up  to  Virginia 
and  be  city  editor  of  the  Enterprise. 

I  would  have  challenged  the  publisher  in  the  "  blind  lead  " 
days — I  wanted  to  fall  down  and  worship  him,  now.  Twenty- 
Five  Dollars  a  week — it  looked  like  bloated  luxury — a  fortune 
a  sinful  and  lavish  waste  of  money.  But  my  transports 


TARGET   SHOOTING. 


FITTING    FOR    DUTY. 


295 


cooled  when  I  thought  of  my  inexperience  and  consequent 
unfitness  for  the  position — and  straightway,  on  top  of  this,  my 
long  array  of  failures  rose  up  before  me.  Yet  if  I  refused 
this  place  I  must  presently  become  dependent  upon  somebody 
for  my  bread,  a  thing  necessarily  distasteful  to  a  man  who  had 
never  experienced  such  a  humiliation  since  he  was  thirteen 
years  old.  Not  much  to  be  proud  of,  since  it  is  so  common 
—but  then  it  was  all  I  had  to  be  proud  of.  So  I  was  scared 
into  being  a  city  editor.  I  wrould  have  declined,  otherwise. 
Necessity  is  the  mother  of  "  taking  chances."  I  do  not  doubt 
that  if,  at  that  time,  I  had  been  offered  a  salary  to  translate 
the  Talmud  from  the  original  Hebrew,  I  would  have  accepted 
— albeit  with  diffidence  and  some  misgivings — and  thrown  as 
much  variety  into  it  as  I  could  for  the  money. 

I  went  up  to  Virginia  and  entered  upon  my  new  vocation. 
I  was  a  rusty  looking  city  editor,  I  am  free  to  confess — coat- 
less,  slouch  hat,  blue  woolen  shirt,  pantaloons  stuffed  into 
boot-tops,  whiskered  half 
down  to  the  waist,  and  the 
universal  navy  revolver  slung 
to  my  belt.  But  I  secured  a 
more  Christian  costume  and 
discarded  the  revolver.  I  had 
never  had  occasion  to  kill 
anybody,  nor  ever  felt  a 
desire  to  do  so,  but  had  worn 
the  thing  in  deference  to 
popular  sentiment,  and  in 
order  that  I  might  not,  by  its 
absence,  be  offensively  con 
spicuous,  and  a  subject  of 
remark.  But  the  other  edi 
tors,  and  all  the  printers, 
carried  revolvers.  I  asked 
the  chief  editor  and  proprietor  (Mr.  Goodman,  I  will  call  him, 
since  it  describes  him  as  well  as  any  name  could  do)  for  some 
instructions  with  regard  to  my  duties,  and  he  told  me  to  go  all 


AS  CITY  EDITOR. 


296  MY    FIRST    EFFORT. 

over  town  and  ask  all  sorts  of  people  all  sorts  of  questions, 
make  notes  of  the  information  gained,  and  write  them  out  for 
publication.  And  he  added  : 

"  Never  say  '  We  learn '  so-and-so,  or  '  It  is  reported,  or  '  It 
is  rumored,'  or  'We  understand'  so-and-so,  but  go  to  head 
quarters  and  get  the  absolute  facts,  and  then  speak  out  and  say 
*  It  is  so-and-so.'  Otherwise,  people  will  not  put  confidence  in 
your  news.  Unassailable  certainty  is  the  thing  that  gives  a 
newspaper  the  firmest  and  most  valuable  reputation." 

It  was  the  whole  thing  in  a  nut-shell ;  and  to  this  day 
when  I  find  a  reporter  commencing  his  article  with  "We 
understand,"  I  gather  a  suspicion  that  he  has  not  taken  as 
much  pains  to  inform  himself  as  he  ought  to  have  done.  I 
moralize  well,  but  I  did  not  always  practise  well  when  I  was  a 
city  editor ;  I  let  fancy  get  the  upper  hand  of  fact  too  often 
when  there  wras  a  dearth  of  news.  I  can  never  forget  my  first 
day's  experience  as  a  reporter.  I  wandered  about  town 
questioning  everybody,  boring  everybody,  and  finding  out  that 
nobody  knew  anything.  At  the  end  of  five  hours  my  note 
book  was  still  barren.  I  spoke  to  Mr.  Goodman.  He  said  : 

"  Dan  used  to  make  a  good  thing  out  of  the  hay  wagons  in 
a  dry  time  when  there  were  no  fires  or  inquests.  Are  there 
no  hay  wagons  in  from  the  Truckee  ?  If  there  are,  you  might 

speak  of  the  re 
newed  activity  and 
all  that  sort  of  thing, 
in  the  hay  business, 
you  know.  It  isn't 
sensational  or  ex 
citing,  but  it  fills  up 
and  looks  business 
like." 

I  canvassed  the 


THE  ENTIRE  MARKET.  City  agaill 

one    wretched    old 

hay  truck  dragging  in  from  the  country.     But  I  made  affluent 
use  of  it.      1  multiplied  it  by  sixteen,  brought  it  into  town 


"AN    ILL    WIND    THAT    BLOWS    NO    GOOD."         297 


from  sixteen  different  directions,  made  sixteen  separate  items 
out  of  it,  and  got  up  such  another  sweat  about  hay  as  Virginia 
City  had  never  seen  in  the  world  before. 

This  was  encouraging.  Two  nonpareil  columns  had  to  be 
filled,  and  I  was  getting  along.  Presently,  when  things  began 
to  look  dismal  again,  a  desperado  killed  a  man  in  a  saloon  and 
joy  returned  once  more.  I  never  was  sc  glad  over  any  mere 
trifle  before  in  my  life.  I  said  to  the  murderer  : 

"  Sir,  you  are  a  stranger  to  me,  but  you  have  done  me  a 
kindness  this  day  which  I  can  never  forget.  If  whole  years 
of  gratitude  can  be  to  you  any  slight  compensation,  they  shall 
be  yours.  I  was  in  trouble  and  you  have  relieved  me  nobly 
and  at  a  time  when  all 
seemed  dark  and  drear. 
Count  me  your  friend  from 
this  time  forth,  for  I  am 
not  a  man  to  forget  a  favor." 

If  I  did  not  really  say 
that  to  him  I  at  least  felt  a 
sort  of  itching  desire  to  do 
it.  I  wrote  up  the  murder 
with  a  hungry  attention  to 
details,  and  when  it  was 
finished  experienced  but  one 
regret — namely,  that  they 


had  not  hanged 


my 


bene- 


A  FRIEND  INDEED. 


factor  on  the  spot,  so  that 
I  could  work  him  up  too. 

Next  I  discovered  some 
emigrant  wagons  going  into 
camp  on  the  plaza  and  found 
that  they  had  lately  come 
through  the  hostile  Indian  country  and  had  fared  rather 
roughly.  I  made  the  best  of  the  item  that  the  circumstances 
permitted,  and  felt  that  if  I  were  not  confined  within  rigid 
limits  by  the  presence  of  the  reporters  of  the  other  papers  I 
could  add  particulars  that  would  make  the  article  much  more 


298 


MY    LEGITIMATE    CALLING. 


interesting.  However,  I  found  one  wagon  that  was  going  on 
to  California,  and  made  some  judicious  inquiries  of  the  pro 
prietor.  When  I  learned,  through  his  short  and  surly  answers 
to  my  cross-questioning,  that  he  was  certainly  going  on  and 
would  not  be  in  the  city  next  day  to  make  trouble,  I  got 
ahead  of  the  other  papers,  for  I  took  down  his  list  of  names 
and  added  his  party  to  the  killed  and  wounded.  Having 
more  scope  here,  I  put  this  wagon  through  an  Indian  fight 
that  to  this  day  has  no  parallel  in  history. 

My  two  columns  were  filled.  When  I  read  them  over  in 
the  morning  I  felt  that  I  had  found  my  legitimate  occupation 
at  last.  I  reasoned  within  myself  that  news,  and  stirring  news, 
too,  was  wrhat  a  paper  needed,  and  I  felt  that  I  was  peculiarly 
endowed  with  the  ability  to  furnish  it.  Mr.  Goodman  said 
that  I  was  as  good  a  reporter  as  Dan.  I  desired  no  higher 
commendation.  With  encouragement  like  that,  I  felt  that  I 
could  take  my  pen  and  murder  all  the  immigrants  on  the 
plains  if  need  be  and  the  interests  of  the  paper  demanded  it. 


CHAPTER   XLIII. 

HO  AYE  VEK,  as  I  grew  better  acquainted  with  the  business 
and  learned  the  run  of  the  sources  of  information  I 
ceased  to  require  the  aid  of  fancy  to  any  large  extent,  and 
became  able  to  fill  my  columns  without  diverging  noticeably 
from  the  domain  of  fact. 

I  struck  up  friendships  with  the  reporters  of  the  other 
journals,  and  we  swapped  "  regulars  "  with  each  other  and 
thus  economized  work.  "  Regulars  "  are  permanent  sources  of 
news,  like  courts,  bullion  returns,  "  clean-ups  "  at  the  quartz 
mills,  and  inquests.  Inasmuch  as  everybody  went  armed,  we 
had  an  inquest  about  every  day,  and  so  this  department 
was  naturally  set  down  among  the  "  regulars."  We  had 
lively  papers  in  those  days.  My  great  competitor  among  the 
reporters  was  Boggs  of  the  Union.  He  was  an  excellent 
reporter.  Once  in  three  or  four  months  he  would  get  a  little 
intoxicated,  but  as  a  general  thing  he  was  a  wary  and  cautious 
drinker  although  always  ready  to  tamper  a  little  with  the  enemy. 
He  had  the  advantage  of  me  in  one  thing ;  he  could  get  the 
monthly  public  school  report  and  I  could  not,  because  the 
principal  hated  the  Enterprise.  One  snowy  night  when  the 
report  was  due,  I  started  out  sadly  wondering  how  I  was  going 
to  get  it.  Presently,  a  few  steps  up  the  almost  deserted  street 
I  stumbled  on  Boggs  and  asked  him  where  he  was  going. 

"  After  the  school  report." 

"  I'll  go  along  with  you." 

"  JSTo,  sir.     I'll  excuse  you." 

"  Just  as  you  say." 

A  saloon-keeper's  boy  passed  by  with  a  steaming  pitcher 


300        THE    "UNION"    GOT    NO    REPORT— WE    DID. 

of  hot  punch,  and  Boggs  snuffed  the  fragrance  gratefully.  He 
gazed  fondly  after  the  boy  and  saw  him  start  up  the  Enter 
prise  stairs.  I  said : 

"  I  wish  you  could  help  me  get  that  school  business,  but 
since  you  can't,  I  must  run  up  to  the  Union  office  and  see  if  I 
can  get  them  to  let  me  have  a  proof  of  it  after  they  have  set  it 
up,  though  I  don't  begin  to  suppose  they  will.  Good  night." 

"  Hold  on  a  minute.  I  don't  mind  getting  the  report  and 
sitting  around  with  the  boys  a  little,  while  you  copy  it,  if  you're 
willing  to  drop  down  to  the  principal's  witji  me." 

"  Now  you  talk  like  a  rational  being.     Come  along." 

We  plowed  a  couple  of  blocks  through  the  snow,  got  the 
report  and  returned  to  our  office.  It  was  a  short  document  and 
soon  copied.  Meantime  Boggs  helped  himself  to  the  punch. 
I  gave  the  manuscript  back  to  him  and  we  started  out  to  get 
an  inquest,  for  we  heard  pistol  shots  near  by.  We  got  the  par 
ticulars  with  little  loss  of  time,  for  it  was  only  an  inferior  sort  of 
bar-room  murder,  and  of  little  interest  to  the  public,  and  then 
we  separated.  Away  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  when 
we  had  gone  to  press  and  were  having  a  relaxing  concert  as 
usual — for  some  of  the  printers  were  good  singers  and  others 
good  performers  on  the  guitar  and  on  that  atrocity  the  accor- 
deon — the  proprietor  of  the  Union  strode  in  and  desired  to 
know  if  anybody  had  heard  anything  of  Boggs  or  the  school 
report.  We  stated  the  case,  and  all  turned  out  to  help  hunt 
for  the  delinquent.  We  found  him  standing  on  a  table  in 
a  saloon,  with  an  old  tin  lantern  in  one  hand  and  the 
school  report  in  the  other,  haranguing  a  gang  of  intoxicated 
Cornish  miners  on  the  iniquity  of  squandering  the  public 
moneys  on  education  "  when  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  honest 
hard-working  men  are  literally  starving  for  whiskey."  [Riotous 
applause.]  He  had  been  assisting  in  a  regal  spree  with  those 
parties  for  hours.  We  dragged  him  away  and  put  him  to  bed. 

Of  course  there  was  no  school  report  in  the  Union,  and 
Boggs  held  me  accountable,  though  I  was  innocent  of  any  in 
tention  or  desire  to  compass  its  absence  from  that  paper  and 
was  as  sorry  as  any  one  that  the  misfortune  had  occurred. 


A    PLEASANT    EXCURSION. 


301 


But  we  were  perfectly  friendly.     The  day  that  the  school 
report  was  next  due,  the  proprietor  of  the  "  Genessee  "  mine 


AN  EDUCATIONAL  REPORT. 


furnished  us  a  buggy  and  asked  us  to  go  down  and  write  some 
thing  about  the  property — a  very  common  request  and  one 
always  gladly  acceded  to  when  people  furnished  buggies,  for 
we  were  as  fond  of  pleasure  excursions  as  other  people.  In  due 
time  we  arrived  at  the  "mine" — nothing  but  a  hole  in  the 
ground  ninety  feet  deep,  and  no  way  of  getting  down  into  it 
but  by  holding  on  to  a  rope  and  being  lowered  with  a  windlass. 
The  workmen  had  just  gone  off  somewhere  to  dinner.  I  was 
not  strong  enough  to  lower  Boggs' s  bulk ;  so  I  took  an  un- 
lighted  candle  in  my  teeth,  made  a  loop  for  my  foot  in  the 
end  of  the  rope,  implored  Boggs  not  to  go  to  sleep  or  let  the 
windlass  get  the  start  of  him,  and  then  swung  out  over  the 
shaft.  I  reached  the  bottom  muddy  and  bruised  about  the 
elbows,  but  safe.  I  lit  the  candle,  made  an  examination  of 
the  rock,  selected  some  specimens  and  shouted  to  Boggs  to 


302      7HE    "UNION"    GETS    A    REPORT— WE    DON'T. 


"hoist  away.  No  answer.  Presently  a  Iiead  appeared  in  the 
circle  of  daylight  away  aloft,  and  a  voice  came  down : 

"  Are  you  all  set?" 
"  All  set — hoist  away." 
"  Are    you     comforta 
ble?" 

"  Perfectly." 
"  Could  you  wait  a  lit 
tle?" 

"  Oh  certainl y — no 
particular  hurry." 
"Well— good  by." 
"Why?      Where    are 
you  going  ? " 

"After  the  school  re 
port!" 

And  he  did.  I  staid 
down  there  an  hour,  and 
surprised  t  h  e  workmen 
when  they  hauled  up  and 
found  a  man  on  the  rope 
instead  of  a  bucket  of  rock. 
I  walked  home,  too — five 
miles — up  hill.  We  had 
no  school  report  next  morn 
ing  ;  but  the  Union  had. 

Six  months  after  my 
entry  into  journalism  the 
grand  "flush  times"  of 
Silverland  began,  and  they 
continued  with  unabated 

splendor  for  three  years.  All  difficulty  about  filling  up  the 
"local  department"  ceased,  and  the  only  trouble  now  was  how 
to  make  the  lengthened  columns  hold  the  world  of  incidents 
and  happenings  that  came  to  our  literary  net  every  day.  Vir 
ginia  had  grown  to  be  the  "  livest "  town,  for  its  age  and  popu 
lation,  that  America  had  ever  produced.  The  sidewalks 


NO  PARTICULAR  HURRY. 


VIRGINIA    CITY.  303 

swarmed  with  people — to  such  an  extent,  indeed,  that  it  was 
generally  no  easy  matter  to  stem  the  human  tide.  The  streets 
themselves  were  just  as  crowded  with  quartz  wagons,  freight 
teams  and  other  vehicles.  The  procession  was  endless.  So 
great  was  the  pack,  that  buggies  frequently  had  to  wait  half 
an  hour  for  an  opportunity  to  cross  the  principal  street.  Joy 
sat  on  every  countenance,  and  there  was  a  glad,  almost  fierce, 
intensity  in  every  eye,  that  told  of  the  money-getting  schemes 
that  were  seething  in  every  brain  and  the  high  hope  that  held 
sway  in  every  heart.  Money  was  as  plenty  as  dust;  every 
individual  considered  himself  wealthy,  and  a  melancholy  coun 
tenance  was  nowhere  to  be  seen.  There  were  military  com 
panies,  fire  companies,  brass  bands,  banks,  hotels,  theatres, 
"hurdy-gurdy  houses,"  wide-open  gambling  palaces,  political 
pow-wows,  civic  processions,  street  fights,  murders,  inquests, 
riots,  a  whiskey  mill  every  fifteen  steps,  a  Board  of  Aldermen, 
a  Mayor,  a  City  Surveyor,  a  City  Engineer,  a  Chief  of  the 
Fire  Department,  with  First,  Second  and  Third  Assistants, 
a  Chief  of  Police,  City  Marshal  and  a  large  police  force,  two 
Boards  of  Mining  Brokers,  a  dozen  breweries  and  half  a 
dozen  jails  and  station-houses  in  full  operation,  and  some  talk 
of  building  a  church.  The  "  flush  times  "  were  in  magnificent 
flower!  Large  fire-proof  brick  buildings  were  going  up  in 
the  principal  streets,  and  the  wooden  suburbs  were  spreading 
out  in  all  directions.  Town  lots  soared  up  to  prices  that  were 
amazing. 

The  great  "  Comstock  lode "  stretched  its  opulent  length 
straight  through  the  town  from  north  to  south,  and  every  mine 
on  it  was  in  diligent  process  of  development.  One  of  these 
mines  alone  employed  six  hundred  and  seventy-five  men,  and 
in  the  matter  of  elections  the  adage  was,  "as  the  '  Gould  and 
Curry '  goes,  so  goes  the  city."  Laboring  men's  wages  were 
four  and  six  dollars  a  day,  and  they  worked  in  three  "  shifts  " 
or  gangs,  and  the  blasting  and  picking  and  shoveling  went  on 
without  ceasing,  night  and  day. 

The  "  city "  of  Virginia  roosted  royally  midway  up  the 
steep  side  of  Mount  Davidson,  seven  thousand  two  hundred 


304 


LOCATION    AND    SURROUNDINGS. 


feet  above  the  level 
of  the  sea,  and  in  the 
clear  Nevada  atmo 
sphere  was  visible 
from  a  distance  of 
fifty  miles  !  It 
claimed  a  population 
of  fifteen  thousand 
to  eighteen  thousand, 
and  all  day  long  half 
of  this  little  army 
swarmed  the  streets 
like  bees  and  the 
other  half  swrarmed 
among  the  drifts  and 
tunnels  of  the  "  Corn- 
stock,"  hundreds  of 
feet  down  in  the 
earth  directly  under 
those  same  streets. 
Often  we  felt  our 
chairs  jar,  and  heard 
the  faint  boom  of  a 
blast  down  in  the 
bowels  of  the  earth 
under  the  office. 

The  mountain 
side  was  so  steep  that 
the  entire  towrn  had  a 
slant  to  it  like  a  roof. 
Each  street  was  a  ter 
race,  and  from  each 
to  the  next  street  be- 
low  the  descent  was 
forty  or  fifty  feet. 
The  fronts  of  the 
houses  were  level 
with  the  street  they 


MAGNIFICENT    PANORAMA.  305 

faced,  but  their  rear  first  floors  were  propped  on  lofty  stilts ;  a 
man  could  stand  at  a  rear  first  floor  window  of  a  C  street 
house  and  look  down  the  chimneys  of  the  row  of  houses 
below  him  facing  D  street.  It  was  a  laborious  climb,  in  that 
thin  atmosphere,  to  ascend  from  D  to  A  street,  and  you  were 
panting  and  out  of  breath  when  you  got  there ;  but  you  could 
turn  around  and  go  down  again  like  a  house  a-fire — so  to 
speak.  The  atmosphere  was  so  rarified,  on  account  of  the 
great  altitude,  that  one's  blood  lay  near  the  surface  always, 
and  the  scratch  of  a  pin  was  a  disaster  worth  worrying  about, 
for  the  chances  were  that  a  grievous  erysipelas  would  ensue. 
But  to  offset  this,  the  thin  atmosphere  seemed  to  carry  heal 
ing  to  gunshot  wounds,  and  therefore,  to  simply  shoot  your 
adversary  through  both  lungs  was  a  thing  not  likely  to  afford 
you  any  permanent  satisfaction,  for  he  would  be  nearly  certain 
to  be  around  looking  for  you  within  the  month,  and  not  with 
an  opera  glass,  either. 

From  Virginia's  airy  situation  one  could  look  over  a  vast, 
far-reaching  panorama  of  mountain  ranges  and  deserts ;  and 
whether  the  day  was  bright  or  overcast,  whether  the  sun  was 
rising  or  setting,  or  flaming  in  the  zenith,  or  whether  night  and 
the  moon  held  sway,  the  spectacle  was  always  impressive  and 
beautiful.  Over  your  head  Mount  Davidson  lifted  its  gray 
dome,  and  before  and  below  you  a  rugged  canyon  clove  the 
battlemented  hills,  making  a  sombre  gateway  through  which  a 
soft-tinted  desert  was  glimpsed,  with  the  silver  thread  of  a  river 
winding  through  it,  bordered  with  trees  which  many  miles  of 
distance  diminished  to  a  delicate  fringe ;  and  still  further  away 
the  snowy  mountains  rose  up  and  stretched  their  long  barrier 
to  the  filmy  horizon — far  enough  beyond  a  lake  that  burned 
in  the  desert  like  a  fallen  sun,  though  that,  itself,  lay  fifty 
miles  removed.  Look  from  your  window  w^here  you  would, 
there  was  fascination  in  the  picture.  At  rare  intervals — but 
very  rare — there  were  clouds  in  our  skies,  and  then  the  setting 
sun  would  gild  and  flush  and  glorify  this  mighty  expanse  of 
scenery  with  a  bewildering  pomp  of  color  that  held  the  eye 
like  a  spell  and  moved  the  spirit  like  music. 
20f 


OHAPTEE   XLIY. 

MY  salary  was  increased  to  forty  dollars  a  week.  But  I 
seldom  drew  it.  I  had  plenty  of  other  resources,  and 
what  were  two  broad  twenty-dollar  gold  pieces  to  a  man  who 
had  his  pockets  full  of  such  and  a  cumbersome  abundance  of 
bright  half  dollars  besides  ?  [Paper  money  has  never  come 
into  use  on  the  Pacific  coast.]  Reporting  was  lucrative,  and 
every  man  in  the  town  was  lavish  with  his  money  and  his 
"  feet."  The  city  and  all  the  great  mountain  side  were  riddled 
with  mining  shafts.  There  were  more  mines  than  miners. 
True,  not  ten  of  these  mines  were  yielding  rock  worth  hauling 
to  a  mill,  but  everybody  said,  "  Wait  till  the  shaft  gets  down 
where  the  ledge  comes  in  solid,  and  then  you  will  see  !  "  So 
nobody  was  discouraged.  These  were  nearly  all  "  wild  cat  " 
mines,  and  wholly  worthless,  but  nobody  believed  it  then.  The 
"  Ophir,"  the  «  Gould  &  Curry,"  the  "  Mexican,"  and  other 
great  mines  on  the  Comstock  lead  in  Virginia  and  Gold  Hill 
were  turning  out  huge  piles  of  rich  rock  every  day,  and  every 
man  believed  that  his  little  wild  cat  claim  was  as  good  as  any 
on  the  "  main  lead  "  and  would  infallibly  be  worth  a  thousand 
dollars  a  foot  when  he  "  got  down  where  it  came  in  solid." 
Poor  fellow,  he  was  blessedly  blind  to  the  fact  that  he  never 
would  see  that  day.  So  the  thousand  wild  cat  shafts  burrowed 
deeper  and  deeper  into  the  earth  day  by  day,  and  all  men 
were  beside  themselves  with  hope  and  happiness.  How  they 
labored,  prophesied,  exulted !  Surely  nothing  like  it  was  ever 


CREATING    NEW    STOCK. 


307 


seen  before  since  the  world  began.  Every  one  of  these  wild 
cat  mines — not  mines,  but  holes  in  the  ground  over  imaginary 
mines — was  incorporated  and  had  handsomely  engraved 
"  stock  "  and  the  stock  was  salable,  too.  It  was  bought  and 
sold  with  a  feverish  avidity  in  the  boards  every  day.  You 
could  go  up  on  the  mountain  side,  scratch  around  and  find  a 
ledge  (there  was  no  lack  of  them),  put  up  a  u  notice  "  with  a 
grandiloquent  name  in  it,  start  a  shaft,  get  your  stock  printed, 
and  with  nothing 
whatever  to  prove 
that  your  mine  was 
worth  a  straw,  you 
could  put  your  stock 
on  the  market  and 
sell  out  for  hundreds 
and  even  thousands 
of  dollars.  To  make 
money,  and  make  it 
fast,  was  as  easy  as 
it  was  to  eat  your 
dinner.  Every  man 
owned  "  feet "  in 
fifty  different  wild 
cat  mines  and  con 
sidered  his  fortune 
made.  Think  of  a 
city  with  not  one 
solitary  poor  man  in  it !  One  would  suppose  that  when  month 
after  month  went  by  and  still  not  a  wild  cat  mine  [by  wild  cat 
I  mean,  in  general  terms,  any  claim  not  located  on  the  mother 
vein,  -i.  <?.,  the  "  Comstock")  yielded  a  ton  of  rock  worth 
crushing,  the  people  would  begin  to  wonder  if  they  were  not 
putting  too  much  faith  in  their  prospective  riches  ;  but  there 
was  not  a  thought  of  such  a  thing.  They  burrowed  away, 
bought  and  sold,  and  were  happy. 

^New  claims  were  taken  up  daily,  and  it  was  the  friendly 
custom  to  run  straight  to  the  newspaper  offices,  give  the  re- 


A  NEW   MINE. 


308  EDITORIAL    PUFFING. 

porter  forty  or  fifty  "  feet,"  and  get  them  to  go  and  examine 
the  mine  and  publish  a  notice  of  it.  They  did  not  care  a  fig 
what  you  said  about  the  property  so  you  said  something. 
Consequently  we  generally  said  a  word  or  two  to  the  effect 
that  the  "  indications  "  were  good,  or  that  the  ledge  was  "  six 
feet  wide,"  or  that  the  rock  "  resembled  the  Comstock  "  (and 
so  it  did — but  as  a  general  thing  the  resemblance  was  not 
startling  enough  to  knock  you  down).  If  the  rock  was  moder 
ately  promising,  we  followed  the  custom  of  the  country,  used 
strong  adjectives  and  frothed  at  the  mouth  as  if  a  very  marvel 
in  silver  discoveries  had  transpired.  If  the  mine  was  a  "  de 
veloped  "  one,  and  had  no  pay  ore  to  show  (and  of  course  it 
hadn't),  we  praised  the  tunnel ;  said  it  was  one  of  the  most 
infatuating  tunnels  in  the  land ;  driveled  and  driveled  about 
the  tunnel  till  we  ran  entirely  out  of  ecstasies — but  never  said 
a  word  about  the  rock.  We  would  squander  half  a  column  of 
adulation  on  a  shaft,  or  a  new  wire  rope,  or  a  dressed  pine 
windlass,  or  a  fascinating  force  pump,  and  close  with  a  burst  of 
admiration  of  the  "gentlemanly  and  efficient  Superintendent" 
of  the  mine — but  never  utter  a  whisper  about  the  rock.  And 
those  people  were  always  pleased,  always  satisfied.  Occasion 
ally  we  patched  up  and  varnished  our  reputation  for  discrimi 
nation  and  stern,  undeviating  accuracy,  by  giving  some  old 
abandoned  claim  a  blast  that  ought  to  have  made  its  dry  bones 
rattle — and  then  somebody  would  seize  it  and  sell  it  on  the 
fleeting  notoriety  thus  conferred  upon  it. 

There  was  nothing  in  the  shape  of  a  mining  claim  that  was 
not  salable.  We  received  presents  of  "  feet "  every  day.  If 
we  needed  a  hundred  dollars  or  so,  we  sold  some;  if  not,  we 
hoarded  it  away,  satisfied  that  it  would  ultimately  be  worth 
a  thousand  dollars  a  foot.  I  had  a  trunk  about  half  full  of 
"  stock."  When  a  claim  made  a  stir  in  the  market  and  went 
up  to  a  high  figure,  I  searched  through  my  pile  to  see  if  I  had 
any  of  its  stock — and  generally  found  it. 

The  prices  rose  and  fell  constantly  ;  but  still  a  fall  disturbed 
us  little,  because  a  thousand  dollars  a  foot  was  our  figure,  and 
so  we  were  content  to  let  it  fluctuate  as  much  as  it  pleased  till  it 


NEIGHBORLY    COMPLIMENTS. 


309 


reached  it.     My  pile  of  stock  was  not  all  given  to  me  by  people 

who  wished  their  claims  u  noticed."     At  least  half  of  it  was 

given  me  by  persons  who  had  no  thought  of  such  a  thing,  and 

looked  for  nothing  more  than  a  simple  verbal  "  thank  you  ;  "  and 

you  were  not  even  obliged  by  law  to  furnish  that.     If  you  are 

coming  up  the  street  with  a  couple 

of  baskets  of  apples  in  your  hands, 

and  you  meet  a  friend,  you  natu 

rally  invite  him  to  take  a  few. 

That  describes  the  condition  of 

things  in  Virginia  in  the  "  flush 

times."    Every  man  had  his  pock 

ets  full  of  stock,  and  it  was  the 

actual  custom  of  the  country  to 

part  with  small  quantities  of  it  to 

friends  without  the  asking.    Yery 

often  it  was  a  good  idea  to  close  the 

transaction  instantly,  when  a  man 

offered  a  stock  present  to  a  friend, 

for  the  offer  was  only  good  and 

bf.nding  at  that  moment,  and  if  || 

the  price  went  to  a  high  figure 

shortly  afterward  the  procrastina 

tion  was  a  thing  to  be  regretted. 

Mr.  Stewart  (Senator,  now,  from 

Kevada)    one    day  told   me    he 

would  give  me  twenty  feet  of  "  Justis  "  stock  if  I  would  walk 

over  to  his  office.     It  was  worth  five  or  ten  dollars  a  foot.    I 

asked  him  to  make  the  offer  good  for  next  day,  as  I  was  just 

going  to  dinner.     lie  said  he  would  not  be  in  town  ;  so  I 

risked  it  and  took  my  dinner  instead  of  the  stock.     Within 

the  week  the  price  went  up  to  seventy  dollars  and  afterward 

to  a  hundred  and  fifty,  but  nothing  could  make  that  man  yield. 

I  suppose  he  sold  that  stock  of  mine  and  placed  the  guilty 

proceeds  in  his  own  pocket.      [My  revenge  will  be  found  in 

the   accompanying  portrait.]     I  met  three  friends  one  after 

noon,  who  said  they  had  been  buying  "  Overman  "  stock  at 


«TRT  A 


310 


DELAYS    ARE    DANGEROUS. 


PORTRAIT  OF  MR.    STEWART. 


auction  at  eight  dollars  a  foot.  One  said  if  I  would  come  up 
to  his  office  he  would  give  me  fifteen  feet ;  another  said  he 
would  add  fifteen ;  the  third  said  he  would  do  the  same.  But 

I  was  going  after  an  inquest 
and  could  not  stop.  A  few 
weeks  afterward  they  sold  all 
their  "  Overman  "  at  six  hun 
dred  dollars  a  foot  and  gen 
erously  came  around  to  tell 
me  about  it — and  also  to  urge 
me  to  accept  of  the  next  forty - 
five  feet  of  it  that  people  tried 
to  force  on  me.  These  are 
actual  facts,  and  I  could  make 
the  list  a  long  one  and  still 
confine  myself  strictly  to  the 
truth.  Many  a  time  friends 
gave  us  as  much  as  twenty-five  feet  of  stock  that  was  selling 
at  twenty-five  dollars  a  foot,  and  they  thought  no  more  of  it 
than  they  would  of  offering  a  guest  a  cigar.  These  were 
"flush  times"  indeed!  I  thought  they  were  going  to  last 
always,  but  somehow  I  never  was  much  of  a  prophet. 

To  show  what  a  wild  spirit  possessed  the  mining  brain  of 
the  community,  I  will  remark  that  "  claims "  were  actually 
"  located "  in  excavations  for  cellars,  where  the  pick  had  ex 
posed  what  seemed  to  be  quartz  veins — and  not  cellars  in  the 
suburbs,  either,  but  in  the  very  heart  of  the  city ;  and  forth 
with  stock  would  be  issued  and  thrown  on  the  market.  It  was 
small  matter  who  the  cellar  belonged  to — the  "  ledge  "  belonged 
to  the  finder,  and  unless  the  United  States  government  inter 
fered  (inasmuch  as  the  government  holds  the  primary  right  to 
mines  of  the  noble  metals  in  Nevada — or  at  least  did  then), 
it  was  considered  to  be  his  privilege  to  work  it.  Imagine  a 
stranger  staking  out  a  mining  claim  among  the  costly  shrub 
bery  in  your  front  yard  and  calmly  proceeding  to  lay  waste 
the  ground  with  pick  and  shovel  and  blasting  powder !  It  has 
been  often  done  in  California.  In  the  middle  of  one  of  the 


SALTING    MINES. 


311 


principal  business  streets  of  Virginia,  a  man  "located"  a 
mining  claim  and  began  a  shaft  on  it.  He  gave  me  a  hundred 
feet  of  the  stock  and  I  sold  it  for  a  fine  suit  of  clothes  because 
I  was  afraid  somebody  would  fall  down  the  shaft  and  sue  for 
damages.  I  owned  in  another  claim  that  was  located  in  the 
middle  of  another  street ;  and  to  show  how  absurd  people  can 
be,  that  "East  India"  stock  (as  it  was  called)  sold  briskly 
although  there  was  an  ancient  tunnel  running  directly  under 
the  claim  and  any  man  could  go  into  it  and  see  that  it  did  not 
cut  a  quartz  ledge  or  anything  that  remotely  resembled  one. 

One  plan  of  acquiring  sudden  wealth  was  to  "  salt "  a  wrild 
cat  claim  and  sell  out  while  the  excitement  wTas  up.  The  process 
was  simple. 


The  schemer 
located  a 
worthless 
ledge,  sunk 
a  shaft  on  it, 
bought  a 
wagon  load 
of  rich  "Coin- 
stock"  ore, 
dumped  a 
portion  of  it 
into  the  shaft 
and  piled  the 
rest  by  its 
side,  above 
ground. 
Then  he 
showed  the 
property  to  a 
simpleton 
and  sold  it  to 

him  at  a  high  figure.  Of  course  the  wagon  load  of  rich  ore 
was  all  that  the  victim  ever  got  out  of  his  purchase.  A 
most  remarkable  case  of  "salting"  was  that  of  the  "North 
Ophir."  It  was  claimed  that  this  vein  was  a  remote  "  exten- 


SELLING  A  MINE. 


312  A    TRAGEDIAN    IN    A    NEW    ROLE. 

sion  "  of  the  original  "  Ophir,"  a  valuable  mine  on  the  "  Corn- 
stock."  For  a  few  days  everybody  was  talking  about  the  rich 
developments  in  the  North  Ophir.  It  was  said  that  it  yielded 
perfectly  pure  silver  in  small,  solid  lumps.  I  went  to  the 
place  with  the  owners,  and  found  a  shaft  six  or  eight  feet 
deep,  in  the  bottom  of  which  was  a  badly  shattered  vein  of 
dull,  yellowish,  unpromising  rock.  One  would  as  soon  expect 
to  find  silver  in  a  grindstone.  We  got  out  a  pan  of  the  rub 
bish  and  washed  it  in  a  puddle,  and  sure  enough,  among  the 
sediment  we  found  half  a  dozen  black,  bullet-looking  pellets 
of  unimpeachable  "  native  "  silver.  Nobody  had  ever  heard 
of  such  a  thing  before ;  science  could  not  account  for  such  a 
queer  novelty.  The  stock  rose  to  sixty-five  dollars  a  foot,  and 
at  this  figure  the  world-renowned  tragedian,  McKean  Bucha 
nan,  bought  a  commanding  interest  and  prepared  to  quit  the 
stage  once  more — he  was  always  doing  that.  And  then  it 
transpired  that  the  mine  had  been  "  salted  " — and  not  in  any 
hackneyed  way,  either,  but  in  a  singularly  bold,  barefaced  and 
peculiarly  original  and  outrageous  fashion.  On  one  of  the 
lumps  of  "  native "  silver  was  discovered  the  minted  legend, 
"  TED  STATES  OF,"  and  then  it  was  plainly  apparent  that  the 
mine  had  been  "  salted  "  with  melted  half-dollars !  The  lumps 
thus  obtained  had  been  blackened  till  they  resembled  native 
silver,  and  were  then  mixed  with  the  shattered  rock  in  the 
bottom  of  the  shaft.  It  is  literally  true.  Of  course  the  price 
of  the  stock  at  once  fell  to  nothing,  and  the  tragedian  was 
ruined.  But  for  this  calamity  we  might  have  lost  McKean 
Buchanan  from  the  stage. 


CHAPTEE   XLY. 

THE  "  flush  times  "  held  bravely  on.  Something  over  two 
years  before,  Mr.  Goodman  and  another  journeyman 
printer,  had  borrowed  forty  dollars  and  set  out  from  San 
Francisco  to  try  their  fortunes  in  the  new  city  of  Virginia. 
They  found  the  Territorial  Enterprise,  a  poverty-stricken 
weekly  journal,  gasping  for  breath  and  likely  to  die.  They 
bought  it,  type,  fixtures,  good-will  and  all,  for  a  thousand  dol 
lars,  on  long  time.  The  editorial  sanctum,  news-room,  press 
room,  publication  office,  bed-chamber,  parlor,  and  kitchen  were 
all  compressed  into  one  apartment  and  it  was  a  small  one, 
too.  The  editors  and  printers  slept  on  the  floor,  a  China 
man  did  their  cooking,  and  the  "imposing-stone"  was  the 
general  dinner  table.  But  now  things  were  changed.  The 
paper  was  a  great  daily,  printed  by  steam ;  there  were  five 
editors  and  twenty-three  compositors;  the  subscription  price 
was  sixteen  dollars  a  year ;  the  advertising  rates  wrere  exorbi 
tant,  and  the  columns  crowded.  The  paper  was  clearing  from 
six  to  ten  thousand  dollars  a  month,  and  the  "  Enterprise  Build 
ing"  was  finished  and  ready  for  occupation — a  stately  fire 
proof  brick.  Every  day  from  five  all  the  way  up  to  eleven 
columns  of  "live"  advertisements  were  left  out  or  crowded 
into  spasmodic  and  irregular  "  supplements." 

The  "  Gould  &  Curry  "  company  were  erecting  a  monster 
hundred-stamp  mill  at  a  cost  that  ultimately  fell  little  short  of 
a  million  dollars.  Gould  &  Curry  stock  paid  heavy  dividends 
— a  rare  thing,  and  an  experience  confined  to  the  dozen  or  fif- 


314  SANITARY    COMMISSION    FUND. 

teen  claims  located  en  the  "  main  lead,"  the  "  Comstock."  The 
Superintendent  of  the  Gould  &  Curry  lived,  rent  free,  in  a 
fine  house  built  and  furnished  by  the  company.  He  drove  a 
fine  pair  of  horses  which  were  a  present  from  the  company, 
and  his  salary  was  twelve  thousand  dollars  a  year.  The  super 
intendent  of  another  of  the  great  mines  traveled  in  grand 
state,  had  a  salary  of  twenty-eight  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and 
in  a  law  suit  in  after  days  claimed  that  he  was  to  have  had 
one  per  cent,  on  the  gross  yield  of  the  bullion  likewise. 

Money  was  wonderfully  plenty.  The  trouble  was,  not 
how  to  get  it, — but  how  to  spend  it,  how  to  lavish  it, 
get  rid  of  it,  squander  it.  And  so  it  was  a  happy  thing 
that  just  at  this  juncture  the  news  came  over  the  wires 
that  a  great  United  States  Sanitary  Commission  had  been 
formed  and  money  was  wanted  for  the  relief  of  the  wounded 
sailors  and  soldiers  of  the  Union  languishing  in  the  Eastern 
hospitals.  Right  on  the  heels  of  it  came  word  that  San 
Francisco  had  responded  superbly  before  the  telegram  was 
half  a  day  old.  Virginia  rose  as  one  man!  A  Sanitary 
Committee  was  hurriedly  organized,  and  its  chairman  mounted 
a  vacant  cart  in  C  street  and  tried  to  make  the  clamorous  mul 
titude  understand  that  the  rest  of  the  committee  were  flying 
hither  and  thither  and  working  with  all  their  might  and  main, 
and  that  if  the  town  would  only  wait  an  hour,  an  office  would 
be  ready,  books  opened,  and  the  Commission  prepared  to 
receive  contributions.  His  voice  was  drowned  and  his  infor 
mation  lost  in  a  ceaseless  roar  of  cheers,  and  demands  that 
the  money  be  received  now — they  swore  they  would  not  wait. 
The  chairman  pleaded  and  argued,  but,  deaf  to  all  entreaty, 
men  plowed  their  way  through  the  throng  and  rained  checks 
of  gold  coin  into  the  cart  and  skurried  away  for  more.  Hands 
clutching  money,  were  thrust  aloft  out  of  the  jam  by  men  wTho 
hoped  this  eloquent  appeal  would  cleave  a  road  their  strug- 
glings  could  not  open.  The  very  Chinamen  and  Indians 
caught  the  excitement  and  dashed  their  half  dollars  into  the 
cart  without  knowing  or  caring  what  it  was  all  about.  AYomen 
plunged  into  the  crowd,  trimly  attired,  fought  their  way  to  the 


WILD    ENTHUSIASM    OF    THE    PEOPLE. 


315 


cart  with  their  coin,  and  emerged  again,  by  and  by,  with  their 
apparel  in  a  state  of  hopeless  dilapidation.  It  was  the  wildest 
mob  Virginia  had  ever  seen  and  the  most  determined  and  un 
governable  ;  and  when  at  last  it  abated  its  fury  and  dispersed, 


COULDN'T  WAIT. 


it  had  not  a  penny  in  its  pocket.     To  use  its  own  phraseology, 
it  came  there  "  flush  "  and  went  away  "  busted." 

After  that,  the  Commission  got  itself  into  systematic  work 
ing  order,  and  for  weeks  the  contributions  flowed  into  its 
treasury  in  a  generous  stream.  Individuals  and  all  sorts  of 
organizations  levied  upon  themselves  a  regular  weekly  tax  for 


316  THE    SANITARY    FLOUR    SACK. 

the  sanitary  fund,  graduated  according  to  their  means,  and 
there  was  not  another  grand  universal  outburst  till  the  famous 
"  Sanitary  Flour  Sack  "  came  our  way.  Its  history  is  peculiar 
and  interesting.  A  former  schoolmate  of  mine,  by  the  name 
of  Reuel  Gridley,  was  living  at  the  little  city  of  Austin,  in 
the  Reese  river  country,  at  this  time,  and  wras  the  Democratic 
candidate  for  mayor.  He  and  the  Republican  candidate  made 
an  agreement  that  the  defeated  man  should  be  publicly  pre 
sented  with  a  fifty-pound  sack  of  flour  by  the  successful  one, 
and  should  carry  it  home  on  his  shoulder.  Gridley  was 
defeated.  The  new  mayor  gave  him  the  sack  of  flour,  and  he 
shouldered  it  and  carried  it  a  mile  or  two,  from  Lower  Austin 
to  his  home  in  Upper  Austin,  attended  by  a  band  of  music  and 
the  whole  population.  Arrived  there,  he  said  he  did  not  need 
the  flour,  and  asked  what  the  people  thought  he  had  better  do 
with  it.  A  voice  said : 

"  Sell  it  to  the  highest  bidder,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Sani 
tary  fund." 

The  suggestion  was  greeted  with  a  round  of  applause,  and 
Gridley  mounted  a  dry-goods  box  and  assumed  the  role  of 
auctioneer.  The  bids  went  higher  and  higher,  as  the  sympa 
thies  of  the  pioneers  awoke  and  expanded,  till  at  last  the  sack 
was  knocked  down  to  a  mill  man  at  two  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars,  and  his  check  taken.  He  was  asked  where  he  would 
have  the  flour  delivered,  and  he  said : 

"  Nowhere — sell  it  again." 

Now  the  cheers  went  up  royally,  and  the  multitude  were 
fairly  in  the  spirit  of  the  thing.  So  Gridley  stood  there  and 
shouted  and  perspired  till  the  sun  went  down ;  and  when  the 
crowd  dispersed  he  had  sold  the  sack  to  three  hundred  different 
people,  and  had  taken  in  eight  thousand  dollars  in  gold.  And 
still  the  flour  sack  was  in  his  possession. 

The  news  came  to  Virginia,  and  a  telegram  went  back : 

"  Fetch  along  your  flour  sack !  " 

Thirty-six  hours  afterward  Gridley  arrived,  and  an  after 
noon  mass  meeting  was  held  in  the  Opera  House,  and  the 
axiction  began.  But  the  sack  had  come  sooner  than  it  was 


THE    SACK    IN    GOLD    HILL    AND    DAYTON.         317 

expected ;  the  people  were  not  thoroughly  aroused,  and  the 
sale  dragged.  At  nightfall  only  five  thousand  dollars  had 
been  secured,  and  there  was  a  crestfallen  feeling  in  the  com 
munity.  However,  there  was  no  disposition  to  let  the  matter 
rest  here  and  acknowledge  vanquishment  at  the  hands  of  the 
village  of  Austin.  Till  late  in  the  night  the  principal  citizens 
were  at  work  arranging  the  morrow's  campaign,  and  when 
they  went  to  bed  they  had  no  fears  for  the  result.  At  eleven 
the  next  morning  a  procession  of  open  carriages,  attended  by 
clamorous  bands  of  music  and  adorned  with  a  moving  display 
of  flags,  filed  along  C  street  and  was  soon  in  danger  of 
blockade  by  a  huzzaing  multitude  of  citizens.  In  the  first 
carriage  sat  Gridley,  with  the  flour  sack  in  prominent  view, 
the  latter  splendid  with  bright  paint  and  gilt  lettering ;  also  in 
the  same  carriage  sat  the  mayor  and  the  recorder.  The  other 
carriages  contained  the  Common  Council,  the  editors  and 
reporters,  and  other  people  of  imposing  consequence.  The 
crowd  pressed  to  the  corner  of  C  and  Taylor  streets,  expecting 
the  sale  to  begin  there,  but  they  were  disappointed,  and  also 
unspeakably  surprised ;  for  the  cavalcade  moved  on  as  if 
Yirginia  had  ceased  to  be  of  importance,  and  took  its  way 
over  the  "divide,"  toward  the  small  town  of  Gold  Hill. 
Telegrams  had  gone  ahead  to  Gold  Hill,  Silver  City  and 
Dayton,  and  those  communities  were  at  fever  heat  and 
rife  for  the  conflict.  It  was  a  very  hot  day,  and  wonderfully 
dusty.  At  the  end  of  a  short  half  hour  we  descended  into 
Gold  Hill  with  drums  beating  and  colors  flying,  and  enveloped 
in  imposing  clouds  of  dust.  The  whole  population — men, 
women  and  children,  Chinamen  and  Indians,  were  massed  in 
the  main  street,  all  the  flags  in  town  were  at  the  mast  head, 
and  the  blare  of  the  bands  was  drowned  in  cheers.  Gridley 
stood  up  and  asked  who  would  make  the  first  bid  for  the 
National  Sanitary  Flour  Sack.  Gen.  W.  said  : 

"  The  Yellow  Jacket  silver  mining  company  offers  a  thou 
sand  dollars,  coin ! " 

A  tempest  of  applause  followed.  A  telegram  carried 
the  news  to  Yirginia,  and  fifteen  minutes  afterward  that  city's 


318  RETURNED    TO    VIRGINIA    CITY. 

population  was  massed  in  the  streets  devouring  the  tidings — 
for  it  was  part  of  the  programme  that  the  bulletin  boards 
should  do  a  good  work  that  day.  Every  few  minutes  a  new 
dispatch  was  bulletined  from  Gold  Hill,  and  still  the  excite 
ment  grew.  Telegrams  began  to  return  to  us  from  Virginia 
beseeching  Gridley  to  bring  back  the  flour  sack;  but  such 
was  not  the  plan  of  the  campaign.  At  the  end  of  an  hour 
Gold  Hill's  small  population  had  paid  a  figure  for  the  flour 
sack  that  awoke  all  the  enthusiasm  of  Virginia  when  the  grand 
total  was  displayed  upon  the  bulletin  boards.  Then  the 
Gridley  cavalcade  moved  on,  a  giant  refreshed  with  new  lager 
beer  and  plenty  of  it — for  the  people  brought  it  to  the 
carriages  without  waiting  to  measure  it — and  within  three 
hours  more  the  expedition  had  carried  Silver  City  and  Dayton 
by  storm  and  was  on  its  way  back  covered  with  glory.  Every 
move  had  been  telegraphed  and  bulletined,  and  as  the  pro 
cession  entered  Virginia  and  filed  down  C  street  at  half  past 
eight  in  the  evening  the  town  was  abroad  in  the  thorough 
fares,  torches  were  glaring,  flags  flying,  bands  playing,  cheer 
on  cheer  cleaving  the  air,  and  the  city  ready  to  surrender  at 
discretion.  The  auction  began,  every  bid  was  greeted  with 
bursts  of  applause,  and  at  the  end  of  two  hours  and  a  half  a 
population  of  fifteen  thousand  souls  had  paid  in  coin  for  a 
fifty-pound  sack  of  flour  a  sum  equal  to  forty  thousand  dollars 
in  greenbacks !  It  was  at  a  rate  in  the  neighborhood  of  three 
dollars  for  each  man,  woman  and  child  of  the  population. 
The  grand  total  would  have  been  twice  as  large,  but  the 
streets  were  very  narrow,  and  hundreds  who  wanted  to  bid 
could  not  get  within  a  block  of  the  stand,  and  could  not  make 
themselves  heard.  These  grew  tired  of  waiting  and  many  of 
them  went  home  long  before  the  auction  was  over.  This  was 
the  greatest  day  Virginia  ever  saw,  perhaps. 

Gridley  sold  the  sack  in  Carson  city  and  several  California 
towns ;  also  in  San  Francisco.  Then  he  took  it  east  and  sold 
it  in  one  or  two  Atlantic  cities,  I  think.  I  am  not  sure  of 
that,  but  I  know  that  he  finally  carried  it  to  St.  Louis,  where  a 
monster  Sanitary  Fair  was  being  held,  and  after  selling  it 


MR.     GRIDLE1     AND    HIS    LABORS. 


319 


there  for  a  la.-ge  sum  and  helping  on  the  enthusiasm  by  dis 
playing  the  portly  silver  bricks  which  Nevada's  donation  had 
produced,  he  had  the  flour  baked  up  into  small  cakes  and  re 
tailed  them  at  high  prices. 

It  was  estimated  that  when  the  flour  sack's  mission  was 
ended  it  had  been  sold  for  a  grand  total  of  a  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars  in  greenbacks!  This  is  probably  the  only 
instance  on  record  where  common  family  flour  brought  three 
thousand  dollars  a  pound  in  the  public  market. 

It  is  due  to  Mr.  Gridley's  memory  to  mention  that  the 
expenses  of  his  sanitary  flour  sack  expedition  of  fifteen  thou 
sand  miles,  going  and  returning,  were  paid  in  large  part,  if 
not  entirely,  out  of  his  own  pocket.  The  time  he  gave  to  it 
was  not  less  than  three  months.  Mr.  Gridley  was  a  soldier 
in  the  Mexican  wrar  and  a  pioneer  Californian.  He  died  at 
Stocktcn,  California,  in  December,  1870,  greatly  regretted. 


CHAPTEE   XLVI. 

THEKE  were  nabobs  in  those  days — in  the  "  flush  times," 
I  mean.  Every  rich  strike  in  the  mines  created  one  or 
two.  I  call  to  mind  several  of  these.  They  were  careless, 
easy-going  fellows,  as  a  general  thing,  and  the  community  at 
large  was  as  much  benefited  by  their  riches  as  they  were 
themselves — possibly  more,  in  some  cases. 

Two  cousins,  teamsters,  did  some  hauling  for  a  man  and 
had  to  take  a  small  segregated  portion  of  a  silver  mine  in  lieu 
of  $300  cash.  They  gave  an  outsider  a  third  to  open  the 
mine,  and  they  went  on  teaming.  But  not  long.  Ten  months 
afterward  the  mine  was  out  of  debt  and  paying  each  owner 
$8,000  to  $10,000  a  month — say  $100,000  a  year. 

One  of  the  earliest  nabobs  that  Nevada  was  delivered  of 
wore  $6,000  worth  of  diamonds  in  his  bosom,  and  swore  he 
was  unhappy  because  he  could  not  spend  his  money  as  fast  as 
he  made  it. 

Another  Nevada  nabob  boasted  an  income  that  often 
reached  $16,000  a  month  ;  and  he  used  to  love  to  tell  how  he 
had  worked  in  the  very  mine  that  yielded  it,  for  five  dollars  a 
day,  when  he  first  came  to  the  country. 

The  silver  and  sage-brush  State  has  knowledge  of  another 
of  these  pets  of  fortune — lifted  from  actual  poverty  to  affluence 
almost  "in  a  single  night — who  was  able  to  offer  $100,000  for  a 
position  of  high  official  distinction,  shortly  afterward,  and  did 
offer  it — but  failed  to  get  it,  his  politics  not  being  as  sound  as 
his  bank  account. 


A    TRAVELING    NABOB. 


321 


Then  there  was  John  Smith.  He  was  a  good,  honest,  kind- 
hearted  soul,  born  and  reared  in  the  lower  ranks  of  life,  and 
miraculously  ignorant.  He  drove  a  team,  and  owned  a  small 
ranch — a  ranch  that  paid  him  a  comfortable  living,  for  al 
though  it  yielded  but  little  hay,  what  little  it  did  yield  was 
worth  from  $250  to  $300  in  gold  per  ton  in  the  market. 
Presently  Smith  traded  a  few  acres  of  the  ranch  for  a  small 
undeveloped  silver  mine  in  Gold  Hill.  He  opened  the  mine 
and  built  a  little  unpretending  ten-stamp  mill.  Eighteen 
months  afterward  he  retired  from  the  hay  business,  for  his 
mining  income  had  reached  a  most  comfortable  figure.  Some 
people  said  it  was  $30,000  a  month,  and  others  said  it  was 
$60,000.  Smith  was  very  rich  at  any  rate. 

And  then  he  went  to  Europe  and  traveled.  And  when  he 
came  back  he  was  never  tired  of  telling  about  the  fine  hogs  he 
ha.d  seen  in  England,  and 
the  gorgeous  sheep  he  had 
seen  in  Spain,  and  the  fine 
cattle  he  had  noticed  in  the 
vicinity  of  Rome.  He  was 
full  of  the  wonders  of  the 
old  world,  and  advised  every 
body  to  travel.  He  said  a 
man  never  imagined  what 
surprising  things  there  were 
in  the  world  till  he  had 
traveled. 

One  day,  on  board  ship, 
the  passengers  made  up  a 
pool  of  $500,  which  wac  to 
be  the  property  of  the  man 
who  should  come  nearest  to 
guessing  the  run  of  the  ves 
sel  for  the  next  twenty-four 
hours.  Next  day,  toward 

noon,  the  figures  were  all  in  the  purser's  hands  in  sealed  en 
velopes.     Smith  was  serene  and  happy,  for  he  had  been  brib- 


322  INSTANCES    OF    SUDDEN    WEALTH. 

ing  the  engineer.     But  another  party  won  the  prize  !     Smith, 
said : 

"  Here,  that  won't  do !  He  guessed  two  miles  wider  of 
the  mark  than  I  did." 

The  purser  said,  "  Mr.  Smith,  you  missed  it  further  than 
any  man  on  board.  We  traveled  two  hundred  and  eight  miles 
yesterday." 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Smith,  "that's  just  where  I've  got  you, 
for  I  guessed  two  hundred  and  nine.  If  you'll  look  at  my 
figgers  again  you'll  find  a  2  and  two  O's,  which  stands  for  200, 
don't  it  ?— and  after  'em  you'll  find  a  9  (2009),  which  stands 
for  two  hundred  and  nine.  I  reckon  I'll  take  that  money,  if 
you  please." 

The  Gould  &  Curry  claim  comprised  twelve  hundred  feet, 
and  it  all  belonged  originally  to  the  two  men  whose  names  it 
bears.  Mr.  Curry  owned  two  thirds  of  it — and  he  said  that  he 
sold  it  out  for  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  in  cash,  and  an  old 
plug  horse  that  ate  up  his  market  value  in  hay  and  barley  in 
seventeen  days  by  the  watch.  And  he  said  that  Gould  sold 
out  for  a  pair  of  second-hand  government  blankets  and  a  bot 
tle  of  whisky  that  killed  nine  men  in  three  hours,  and  that  an 
unoffending  stranger  that  smelt  the  cork  was  disabled  for  life. 
Four  years  afterward  the  mine  thus  disposed  of  was  worth  in 
the  San  Francisco  market  seven  millions  six  hundred  thousand 
dollars  in  gold  coin. 

In  the  early  days  a  poverty-stricken  Mexican  who  lived  in 
a  canyon  directly  back  of  Virg-inia  City,  had  a  stream  of  water 
as  large  as  a  man's  wrist  trickling  from  the  hill-side  on  his 
premises.  The  Ophir  Company  segregated  a  hundred  feet  of 
their  mine  and  traded  it  to  him  for  the  stream  of  water.  The 
hundred  feet  proved  to  be  the  richest  part  of  the  entire 
mine ;  four  years  after  the  swap,  its  market  value  (including 
its  mill)  was  $1,500,000. 

An  individual  who  owned  twenty  feet  in  the  Ophir  mine 
before  its  great  riches  were  revealed  to  men,  traded  it  for  a 
horse,  and  a  very  sorry  looking  brute  he  was,  too.  A  year  or 
so  afterward,  when  Ophir  stock  went  up  to  $3,000  a  foot,  this 


A    TELEGK  IPH    OPERATOR. 


323 


man,  who  had  not  a  cent,  used  to  say  he  was  the  most  startling 
example  of  magnificence  and  misery  the  world  had  ever  seen 
— because  he  was  able  to  ride  a  sixty-thousand-dollar  horse — 
yet  could  not  scrape  up  cash  enough  to  buy  a  saddle,  and  was 
obliged  to  borrow  one 

O 

or  ride  bareback.  lie 
said  if  fortune  were  to 
give  him  another  sixty- 
thousand-dollar  horse  it 
would  ruin  him. 

A  youth  of  nineteen, 
who  was  a  telegraph 
operator  in  Virginia  on 
a  salary  of  a  hundred 
dollars  a  mouth,  and 
who,  when  he  could  not 
make  out  German  names 
in  the  list  of  San  Fran 
cisco  steamer  arrivals, 
used  to  ingeniously  se 
lect  and  supply  substi 
tutes  for  them  out  of  an 
old  Berlin  city  directory, 
made  himself  rich  by 
watching  the  mining 

telegrams  that  passed  through  his  hands  and  buying  and  sell 
ing  stocks  accordingly,  through  a  friend  in  San  Francisco. 
Once  when  a  private  dispatch  was  sent  from  Virginia  an 
nouncing  a  rich  strike  in  a  prominent  mine  and  advising  that 
the  matter  be  kept  secret  till  a  large  amount  of  the  stock  could 
be  secured,  he  bought  forty  "feet"  of  the  stock  at  twenty 
dollars  a  foot,  and  afterward  sold  half  of  it  at  eight  hundred 
dollars  a  foot  and  the  rest  at  double  that  figure.  Within  three 
months  he  was  worth  $150,000,  and  had  resigned  his  telegraphic 
position. 

Another  telegraph  operator  who  had  been  discharged  by 
the  company  for  divulging  the  secrets  of  the  office,  agreed 


MAGNIFICENCE  AND    MISERY. 


324:  A    HUNDRED    DOLLAR    INVESTMENT. 

with  a  moneyed  man  in  San  Francisco  to  furnish  him  the 
result  of  a  great  Virginia  mining  lawsuit  within  an  hour  after 
its  private  reception  by  the  parties  to  it  in  San  Francisco. 
For  this  he  was  to  have  a  large  percentage  of  the  profits  on 
purchases  and  sales  made  on  it  by  his  fellow-conspirator.  So 
he  went,  disguised  as  a  teamster,  to  a  little  wayside  telegraph 
office  in  the  mountains,  got  acquainted  with  the  operator,  and 
sat  in  the  office  day  after  day,  smoking  his  pipe,  complaining 
that  his  team  was  fagged  out  and  unable  to  travel — and  mean 
time  listening  to  the  dispatches  as  they  passed  clicking  through 
the  machine  from  Virginia.  Finally  the  private  dispatch  an 
nouncing  the  result  of  the  lawsuit  sped  over  the  wires,  and  as 
soon  as  he  heard  it  he  telegraphed  his  friend  in  San  Francisco : 

"Am  tired  waiting.     Shall  sell  the  team  and  go  home." 

It  was  the  signal  agreed  upon.  The  word  "waiting"  left 
outf,  would  have  signified  that  the  suit  had  gone  the  other  way. 
The  mock  teamster's  friend  picked  up  a  deal  of  the  mining 
stock,  at  low  figures,  before  the  news  became  public,  and  a 
fortune  was  the  result. 

For  a  long  time  after  one  of  the  great  Yirginia  mines  had 
been  incorporated,  about  fifty  feet  of  the  original  location  were 
still  in  the  hands  of  a  man  who  had  never  signed  the  incorpo 
ration  papers.  The  stock  became  very  valuable,  and  every 
effort  was  made  to  find  this  man,  but  he  had  disappeared. 
Once  it  was  heard  that  he  was  in  iNew  York,  and  one  or  two 
speculators  went  east  but  failed  to  find  him.  Once  the  news 
came  that  he  wras  in  the  Bermudas,  and  straightway  a  specu 
lator  or  two  hurried  east  and  sailed  for  Bermuda — but  he  was 
not  there.  Finally  he  was  heard  of  in  Mexico,  and  a  friend 
of  his,  a  bar-keeper  on  a  salary,  scraped  together  a  little  money 
and  sought  him  out,  bought  his  "  feet "  for  a  hundred  dollars, 
returned  and  sold  the  property  for  $75,000. 

But  why  go  on  ?  The  traditions  of  Silver-land  are  filled 
with  instances  like  these,  and  I  would  never  get  through  enu 
merating  them  were  I  to  attempt  do  it.  I  only  desired  to  give 
the  reader  an  idea  of  a  peculiarity  of  the  "flush  times"  which 
I  could  not  present  so  strikingly  in  any  other  way,  and  which 


NEVADA  NABOBS  IN  NEW  YORK.        325 

some  mention  of  was  necessary  to  a  realizing  comprehension 
of  the  time  and  the  country. 

I  was  personally  acquainted  with  the  majority  of  the 
nabobs  I  have  referred  to,  and  so,  for  old  acquaintance  sake, 
I  have  shifted  their  occupations  and  experiences  around  in 
such  a  way  as  to  keep  the  Pacific  public  from  recognizing 
these  once  notorious  men.  No  longer  notorious,  for  the 
majority  of  them  have  drifted  back  into  poverty  and  obscurity 
again. 

In  Nevada  there  used  to  be  current  the  story  of  an  adven 
ture  of  two  of  her  nabobs,  which  may  or  may  not  have 
occurred.  I  give  it  for  what  it  is  worth : 

Col.  Jim  had  seen  somewhat  of  the  world,  and  knew  more 
or  less  of  its  ways ;  but  Col.  Jack  was  from  the  back  settle 
ments  of  the  States,  had  led  a  life  of  arduous  toil,  and  had 
never  seen  a  city.  These  two,  blessed  with  sudden  wealth, 
projected  a  visit  to  New  York, — Col.  Jack  to  see  the  sights, 
and  Col.  Jim  to  guard  his  unsophistication  from  misfortune. 
They  reached  San  Francisco  in  the  night,  and  sailed  in  the 
morning.  Arrived  in  New  York,  Col.  Jack  said : 

"  I've  heard  tell  of  carriages  all  my  life,  and  now  I  mean  to 
have  a  ride  in  one ;  I  don't  care  what  it  costs.  Come  along." 

They  stepped  out  on  the  sidewalk,  and  Col.  Jim  called  a 
stylish  barouche.  But  Col.  Jack  said : 

"  No,  sir !  None  of  your  cheap- John  turn-outs  for  me. 
I'm  here  to  have  a  good  time,  and '  money  ain't  any  object.  I 
mean  to  have  the  nobbiest  rig  that's  going.  Now  here  comes 
the  very  trick.  Stop  that  yaller  one  with  the  pictures  on  it — 
don't  you  fret — I'll  stand  all  the  expenses  myself." 

So  Col.  Jim  stopped  an  empty  omnibus,  and  they  got  in. 
Said  Col.  Jack : 

"Ain't  it  gay,  though?  Oh,  no,  I  reckon  not!  Cush 
ions,  and  windows,  and  pictures,  till  you  can't  rest.  What 
would  the  boys  say  if  they  could  see  us  cutting  a  swell  like 
this  in  New  York  ?  By  George,  I  wish  they  could  see  us." 

Then  he  put  his  head  out  of  the  window,  and  shouted  to 
the  driver : 


326 


CHARTERED    SHEBANG." 


"  Say,  Johnny,  this  suits  me  ! — suits  yours  truly,  you  bet, 
you !     I  want  this  shebang  all  day.     I'm  cm  it,  old  man !    Let 


'em  out !     Make  'em  go !     We'll  make  it  all  right  with  you, 
sonny  1 " 

The  driver  passed  his  hand  through  the  strap-hole,  and  tap 
ped  for  his  fare — it  was  before  the  gongs  came  into  common 
use.  Col.  Jack  took  the  hand,  and  shook  it  cordially.  He 
said: 

"You  twig  me,  old  pard!  All  right  between  gents. 
Smell  of  that,  and  see  how  you  like  it ! " 

And  he  put  a  twenty-dollar  gold  piece  in  the   driver's 
hand.      After   a  moment 
the  driver  said  he   could 
not  make  change. 

"  Bother  the  change  ! 
Hide  it  out.  Put  it  in 
your  pocket." 

Then  to  Col.  Jim,  with 
a  sounding  slap  on  his 
thigh : 

"Ain't  it  style,  though  ? 
Hanged  if  I  don't  hire 
this  thing  every  day  for  a 
week." 

The  omnibus  stopped, 
and  a  young  lady  got  in. 
Col.  Jack  stared  a  moment, 
then  nudged  Col.  Jim  with 
his  elbow : 

"Don't  say  a  word," 
he  whispered.  "  Let  her 
ride,  if  she  wants  to.  Gracious,  there's  room  enough." 

The  young  lady  got  out  her  porte-monnaie,  and  handed  her 
fare  to  Col.  Jack. 

"What's  this  for?"  said  he. 

"  Give  it  to  the  driver,  please." 

"  Take   back   your  money,  madam.     We   can't  allow  it. 


A  FRIENDLY   DRIVER. 


A    FINE    RIDE    ON    BROADWAY. 


327 


You're  welcome  to  ride  here  as  long  as  you  please,  but  this  she 
bang's  chartered,  and  we  can't  let  you  pay  a  cent." 

The  girl  shrunk  into  a  comer,  bewildered.  An  old  lady 
with  a  basket  climbed  in,  and  proffered  her  fare. 

"  Excuse  me,"  said  Col.  Jack.  "  You're  perfectly  welcome 
here,  madam,  but  we  can't  allow  you  to  pay.  Set  right  down 
there,  mum,  and  don't  you  be  the  least  uneasy.  Make  your 
self  just  as  free  as  if  you  was  in  your  own  turn-out." 

Within  two  minutes,  three  gentlemen,  two  fat  women,  and 
a  couple  of  children,  entered. 

"  Come  right  along,  friends,"  said  Col.  Jack ;  "  don't  mind 
us.  This  is  a  free  blow-out."  Then  he  whispered  to  Col. 
Jim,  "  New  York  ain't  no  sociable  place,  I  don't  reckon — it 
ain't  no  name  for  it ! " 

He  resisted  every  effort  to  pass  fares  to  the  driver,  and 

made  everybody  cordially 
welcome.  The  situation 
dawned  on  the  people,  and 
they  pocketed  their  money, 
and  delivered  themselves 
up  to  covert  enjoyment  of 
the  episode.  Half  a  dozen 
more  passengers  entered. 

"  Oh,  there's  plenty 
of  room,"  said  Col.  Jack. 
"  Walk  right  in,  and  make 
yourselves  at  home.  A 
blow-out  ain't  worth  any 
thing  as  a  blow-out,  unless 
a  body  has  company."  Then  in  a  whisper  to  Col.  Jim :  "  But 
ain't  these  New  Yorkers  friendly  1  And  ain't  they  cool  about 
it,  too  \  Icebergs  ain't  anywhere.  I  reckon  they'd  tackle  a 
hearse,  if  it  was  going  their  way." 

More  passengers  got  in ;  more  yet,  and  still  more.  Both 
seats  were  filled,  and  a  file  of  men  were  standing  up,  holding 
on  to  the  cleats  overhead.  Parties  with  baskets  and  bundles 
were  climbing  up  on  the  roof.  Half-suppressed  laughter  rip 
pled  up  from  all  sides. 


ASTONISHES   THE   NA'iiVES. 


328 


NEW    YORKERS    BECOME    SOCIABLE. 


"  "Well,  for  clean,  cool,  out-and-out  clieek,  if  this  don't  bang 
anything  that  ever  I  saw,  I'm  an  Injun  ! "  whispered  Col. 
Jack. 

A  Chinaman  crowded  his  way  in. 

"  I  weaken ! "  said  Col.  Jack.  "  Hold  on,  driver !  Keep 
your  seats,  ladies  and  gents.  Just  make  yourselves  free — 
everything's  paid  for.  Driver,  rustle  these  folks  around  as 
long  as  they're  a  mind  to  go — friends  of  ours,  you  know. 
Take  them  everywheres — and  if  you  want  more  money,  come 


COL.  JACK  "WEAKENS." 

to  the  St.  Nicholas,  and  we'll  make  it  all  right.  Pleasant 
journey  to  you,  ladies  and  gents — go  it  just  as  long  as  you 
please — it  shan't  cost  you  a  cent !  " 

The  two  comrades  got  out,  and  Col.  Jack  said : 
"  Jimmy,  it's  the  sociablest  place  /  ever  saw.  The  China 
man  waltzed  in  as  comfortable  as  anybody.  If  we'd  staid 
awhile,  I  reckon  we'd  had  some  niggers.  B'  George,  we'll 
have  to  barricade  our  doors  to-night,  or  some  of  these  ducks 
will  be  trying  to  sleep  with  us." 


OHAPTEE   XLYII. 

Ql  OMEBODY  lias  said  that  in  order  to  know  a  community, 
k3  one  must  observe  the  style  of  its  funerals  and  know 
what  manner  of  men  they  bury  with  most  ceremony.  I  can 
not  say  which  class  we  buried  with  most  eclat  in  our  "flush 
times,"  the  distinguished  public  benefactor  or  the  distinguished 
rough — possibly  the  two  chief  grades  or  grand  divisions  of 
society  honored  their  illustrious  dead  about  equally;  and 
hence,  no  doubt  the  philosopher  I  have  quoted  from  would 
have  needed  to  see  two  representative  funerals  in  Virginia 
before  forming  his  estimate  of  the  people. 

There  was  a  grand  time  over  Buck  Fanshaw  when  he  died. 
He  was  a  representative  citizen.  He  had  "killed  his  man" — 
not  in  his  own  quarrel,  it  is  true,  but  in  defence  of  a  stranger 
unfairly  beset  by  numbers.  He  had  kept  a  sumptuous  saloon. 
He  had  been  the  proprietor  of  a  dashing  helpmeet  whom  he 
could  have  discarded  without  the  formality  of  a  divorce.  He 
had  held  a  high  position  in  the  fire  department  and  been  a 
very  Warwick  in  politics.  When  he  died  there  was  great 
lamentation  throughout  the  town,  but  especially  in  the  vast 
bottom-stratum  of  society. 

On  the  inquest  it  was  shown  that  Buck  Fanshaw,  in  the 
delirium  of  a  wasting  typhoid  fever,  had  taken  arsenic,  shot 
himself  through  the  body,  cut  his  throat,  ind  jumped  out  of  a 
four-story  window  and  broken  his  neck — and  after  due  delib 
eration,  the  jury,  sad  and  tearful,  but  with  intelligence  un- 
blinded  by  its  sorrow,  brought  in  a  verdict  of  death  "by  the 
visitation  of  God."  What  could  the  world  do  without  juries  ? 

Prodigious  preparations  were  made  for  the  funeral.  All 
the  vehicles  in  town  were  hired,  all  the  saloons  put  in  mourn- 


330  SCOTTT    BRIGGS    THE    COMMITTEEMAN. 

ing,  all  the  municipal  and  fire-company  flags  hung  at  half-mast, 
and  all  the  firemen  ordered  to  muster  in  uniform  and  bring 
their  machines  duly  draped  in  black.  Now — let  us  remark  in 
parenthesis — as  all  the  peoples  of  the  earth  had  representative 
adventurers  in  the  Silverland,  and  as  each  adventurer  had 
brought  the  slang  of  his  nation  or  his  locality  with  him,  the 
combination  made  the  slang  of  Nevada  the  richest  and  the 
most  infinitely  varied  and  copious  that  had  ever  existed  any 
where  in  the  world,  perhaps,  except  in  the  mines  of  California 
in  the  "  early  days."  Slang  wras  the  language  of  Nevada.  It 
was  hard  to  preach  a  sermon  without  it,  and  be  understood. 
Such  phrases  as  "  You  bet !  "  "  Oh,  no,  I  reckon  not !  "  "  No 
Irish  need  apply,"  and  a  hundred  others,  became  so  common 
as  to  fall  from  the  lips  of  a  speaker  unconsciously — and  very 
often  when  they  did  not  touch  the  subject  under  discussion 
and  consequently  failed  to  mean  anything. 

After  Buck  Fanshaw's  inquest,  a  meeting  of  the  short- 
haired  brotherhood  w^as  held,  for  nothing  can  be  done  on  the 
Pacific  coast  without  a  public  meeting  and  an  expression  of 
sentiment.  Hegretful  resolutions  were  passed  and  various 
committees  appointed  ;  among  others,  a  committee  of  one  wTas 
deputed  to  call  on  the  minister,  a  fragile,  gentle  ,spirituel  new 
fledgling  from  an  Eastern  theological  seminary,  and  as  yet  un 
acquainted  with  the  wrays  of  the  mines.  The  committeeman, 
"Scotty"  Briggs,  made  his  visit;  and  in  after  clays  it  was 
worth  something  to  hear  the  minister  tell  about  it.  Scotty 
was  a  stalwart  rough,  whose  customary  suit,  when  on  weighty 
official  business,  like  committee  work,  was  a  fire  helmet,  flam 
ing  red  flannel  shirt,  patent  leather  belt  wTith  spanner  and 
revolver  attached,  coat  hung  over  arm,  and  pants  stuffed  into 
boot  tops.  He  formed  something  of  a  contrast  to  the  pale 
theological  student.  It  is  fair  to  say  of  Scotty,  however,  in 
passing,  that  he  had  a  warm  heart,  and  a  strong  love  for  his 
friends,  and  never  entered  into  a  quarrel  when  he  could  rea 
sonably  keep  out  of  it.  Indeed,  it  was  commonly  said  that 
whenever  one  of  Scotty's  fights  was  investigated,  it  always 
turned  out  that  it  had  originally  been  no  affair  of  his,  but  that 
out  of  native  goodheartedness  he  had  dropped  in  of  his  own 


INTERVIEW    WITH    THE    CLERGYMAN.  331 

accord  to  help  the  man  who  was  getting  the  worst  of  it.  He 
and  Buck  Fanshaw  were  bosom  friends,  for  years,  and  had 
often  taken  adventurous  "pot-luck"  together.  On  one  occa 
sion,  they  had  thrown  off  their  coats  and  taken  the  weaker  side 
in  a  tight  among  strangers,  and  after  gaining  a  hard-earned 
victory,  turned  and  found  that  the  men  they  were  helping  had 
deserted  early,  and  not  only  that,  but  had  stolen  their  coats 
and  made  off  with  them !  But  to  return  to  Scotty's  visit  to 
the  minister.  He  was  on  a  sorrowful  mission,  now,  and  his 
face  was  the  picture  of  woe.  Being  admitted  to  the  presence 
he  sat  down  before  the  clergyman,  placed  his  fire-hat  on  an 
unfinished  manuscript  sermon  under  the  minister's  nose,  took 
from  it  a  red  silk  handkerchief,  wiped  his  brow  and  heaved  a 
sigh  of  dismal  impressiveness,  explanatory  of  his  business. 


COMMITTEEMAN  AND  MINISTER. 


He   choked,   and    even    shed   tears;  but  with  an  effort  he 
mastered  his  voice  and  said  in  lugubrious  tones : 

"Are  you  the  duck  that  runs  the  gospel-mill  next  door?" 
"  Am  I  the — pardon  me,  I  believe  I  do  not  understand  ? " 
With  another  sigh  and  a  half-sob,  Scotty  rejoined  : 


332  SCOTTY    CAN'T    PLAY    HIS     HAND. 

"  Why  you  see  we  are  in  a  bit  of  trouble,  and  the  boys 
thought  maybe  you  would  give  us  a  lift,  if  we'd  tackle  you — 
that  is,  if  I've  got  the  rights  of  it  and  you  are  the  head  clerk 
of  the  doxology-works  next  door." 

"  I  am  the  shepherd  in  charge  of  the  flock  whose  fold  is 
next  door." 

"  The  which  ? " 

"  The  spiritual  adviser  of  the  little  company  of  believers 
whose  sanctuary  adjoins  these  premises." 

Scotty  scratched  his  head,  reflected  a  moment,  and  then 
said  : 

"  You  ruther  hold  over  me,  pard.  I  reckon  I  can't  call 
that  hand.  Ante  and  pass  the  buck." 

"How?  I  beg  pardon.  What  did  I  understand  vou  to 
say?" 

"Well,  you've  ruther  got  the  bulge  on  me.  Or  maybe 
we've  both  got  the  bulge,  somehow.  You  don't  smoke  me 
and  I  don't  smoke  you.  You  see,  one  of  the  boys  has  passed 
in  his  checks  and  we  want  to  give  him  a  good  send-off,  and  so 
the  thing  I'm  on  now  is  to  roust  out  somebody  to  jerk  a  little 
chin-music  for  us  and  waltz  him  through  handsome." 

"  My  friend,  I  seem  to  grow  more  and  more  bewildered. 
Your  observations  are  wholly  incomprehensible  to  me.  Can 
not  you  simplify  them  in  some  way  ?  At  first  I  thought 
perhaps  I  understood  you,  but  I  grope  now.  Would  it  not 
expedite  matters  if  you  restricted  yourself  to  categorical 
statements  of  fact  unencumbered  with  obstructing  accumula 
tions  of  metaphor  and  allegory  ? " 

Another  pause,  and  more  reflection.     Then,  said  Scotty : 

"  I'll  have  to  pass,  I  judge." 

"How?" 

"  You've  raised  me  out,  pard." 

"  I  still  fail  to  catch  your  meaning." 

"Why,  that  last  lead  of  yourn  is  too  many  for  me — that's 
the  idea.  I  can't  neither  trump  nor  follow  suit." 

The  clergyman  sank  back  in  his  chair  perplexed.  Scotty 
leaned  his  head  on  his  hand  and  gave  himself  up  to  thought. 
Presently  his  face  came  up,  sorrowful  but  confident. 


THE    MINISTER    A    LITTLE    MIXED.  333 

"  I've  got  it  now,  so's  you  can  savvy,"  lie  said.  "  What  we 
want  is  a  gospel-sharp.  See  ? " 

"A  what?" 

"  Gospel-sharp.     Parson." 

"  Oh  !  Why  did  you  not  say  so  before  ?  I  am  a  clergy 
man — a  parson." 

"  Now  you  talk  !  You  see  my  blind  and  straddle  it  like  a 
man.  Put  it  there  ! " — extending  a  brawny  paw,  which  closed 
over  the  minister's  small  hand  and  gave  it  a  shake  indicative 
of  fraternal  sympathy  and  fervent  gratification. 

"  Now  we're  all  right,  pard.  Let's  start  fresh.  Don't  you 
mind  my  snuffling  a  little — becuz  we're  in  a  power  of  trouble. 
You  see,  one  of  the  boys  has  gone  up  the  flume —  " 

"Gone  where?" 

"  Up  the  flume — throwed  up  the  sponge,  you  understand." 

"  Thrown  up  the  sponge  ?  " 

"  Yes— kicked  the  bucket—  " 

"  Ah — has  departed  to  that  mysterious  country  from  whose 
oourne  no  traveler  returns." 

"Return  !     I  reckon  not.     Why  pard,  he's  dead!  " 

"  Yes,  I  understand." 

"  Oh,  you  do  ?  Well  I  thought  maybe  you  might  be  get 
ting  tangled  some  more.  Yes,  you  see  he's  dead  again —  " 

"  Again  f    Why,  has  he  ever  been  dead  before  ?  " 

"  Dead  before  ?  No  !  Do  you  reckon  a  man  has  got  as 
many  lives  as  a  cat  ?  But  you  bet  you  he's  awful  dead  now, 
poor  old  boy,  and  I  wish  I'd  never  seen  this  day.  I  don't 
want  no  better  friend  than  Buck  Fanshaw.  I  knowed  him  by 
the  back  ;  and  when  I  know  a  man  and  like  him,  I  freeze  to 
him — you  hear  me.  Take  him  all  round,  pard,  there  never 
was  a  bullier  man  in  the  mines.  No  man  ever  knowed  Buck 
Fanshaw  to  go  back  on  a  friend.  But  it's  all  up,  you  know, 
it's  all  up.  It  ain't  no  use.  They've  scooped  him." 

"  Scooped  him  ?  " 

"Yes — death  has.  Well,  well,  well,  we've  got  to  give  him 
up.  Yes  indeed.  It's  a  kind  of  a  hard  world,  after  all,  ain't 
it  ?  But  pard,  he  was  a  rustler  !  You  ought  to  seen  him  get 
started  once.  He  was  a  bully  boy  with  a  glass  eye  !  Just  spit 


334:  BEGINNING    TO    SEE. 

in  his  face  and  give  him  room  according  to  his  strength,  and 
it  was  just  beautiful  to  see  him  peel  and  go  in.  lie  was  the 
worst  son  of  a  thief  that  ever  drawed  breath.  Pard,  he  was 
on  it !  He  was  on  it  bigger  than  an  Injun  !  " 

"  On  it  ?      On  what  ? " 

"  On  the  shoot.  On  the  shoulder.  On  the  fight,  you  un 
derstand.  He  didn't  give  a  continental  for  anybody.  Beg  your 
pardon,  friend,  for  coining  so  near  saying  a  cuss-word — but  you 
see  I'm  on  an  awful  strain,  in  this  palaver,  on  account  of  hav 
ing  to  cramp  down  and  draw  everything  so  mild.  But  we've 
got  to  give  him  up.  There  ain't  any  getting  around  that,  I 
don't  reckon.  Now  if  we  can  get  you  to  help  plant  him— 

"  Preach  the  funeral  discourse  ?     Assist  at  the  obsequies  ? " 

"  Obs'quies  is  good.  Yes.  That's  it — that's  our  little 
game.  We  are  going  to  get  the  thing  up  regardless,  you 
know.  He  was  always  nifty  himself,  and  so  you  bet  you  his 
funeral  ain't  going  to  be  no  slouch — solid  silver  door-plate  on 
his  coffin,  six  plumes  on  the  hearse,  and  a  nigger  on  the  box  in 
a  biled  shirt  and  a  plug  hat — how's  that  for  high  ?  And  we'll 
take  care  of  you,  pard.  We'll  fix  you  all  right.  There'll  be  a 
kerridge  for  you ;  and  whatever  you  want,  yon  just  'scape  out 
and  we'll  'tend  to  it.  We've  got  a  shebang  fixed  up  for  you  to 
stand  behind,  in  No.  1's  house,  and  don't  you  be  afraid.  Just 
go  in  and  toot  your  horn,  if  you  don't  sell  a  clam.  Put  Buck 
through  as  bully  as  you  can,  pard,  for  anybody  that  knowed 
him  will  tell  you  that  he  was  one  of  the  whitest  men  that  was 
ever  in  the  mines.  You  can't  draw  it  too  strong.  He  never 
could  stand  it  to  see  things  going  wrong.  He's  done  more  to 
make  this  town  quiet  and  peaceable  than  any  man  in  it.  I've 
seen  him  lick  four  Greasers  in  eleven  minutes,  myself.  If  a 
thing  wanted  regulating,  he  warn't  a  man  to  go  browsing 
around  after  somebody  to  do  it,  but  he  would  prance  in  and 
regulate  it  himself.  He  warn't  a  Catholic.  Scasely.  He  was 
down  on  'em.  His  word  was,  '  No  Irish  need  apply  ! '  But  it 
didn't  make  no  difference  about  that  when  it  came  down  to 
what  a  man's  rights  was — and  so,  when  some  roughs  jumped 
the  Catholic  bone-yard  and  started  in  to  stake  out  town-lots 
in  it  he  went  for  'em  !  And  he  cleaned  'em,  too !  I  was  there, 
pard,  and  I  seen  it  myself." 


ALL    DOWN    BUT    NINE.1 


335 


"  That  was  very  well  indeed — at  least  the  impulse  was — 
whether  the  act  was  strictly  defensible  or  not.     Had  deceased 


SCOTTY  REGULATING  MATTERS. 


any  religious  convictions  ?  That  is  to  say,  did  he  feel  a  de 
pendence  upon,  or  acknowledge  allegiance  to  a  higher  power  ? ' 

More  reflection. 

"  I  reckon  you've  stumped  me  again,  pard.  Could  you  say 
it  over  once  more,  and  say  it  slow  ? " 

"  Well,  to  simplify  it  somewhat,  was  he,  or  rather  had  he 
ever  been  connected  with  any  organization  sequestered  from 
secular  concerns  and  devoted  to  self-sacrifice  in  the  interests 
of  morality?" 

"  All  down  but  nine — set  'em  up  on  the  other  alley,  pard." 

"  What  did  I  understand  you  to  say  ? " 

"  Why,  you're  most  too  many  for  me,  you  know.  When 
you  get  in  with  your  left  I  hunt  grass  every  time.  Every 
time  you  draw,  you  fill ;  but  I  don't  seem  to  have  any  luck. 
Lets  have  a  new  deal." 


336  BUCK    FANSHAW    AS    A    CITIZEN. 

"How?    Begin  again?" 

"  That's  it." 

"  Very  well.     Was  he  a  good  man,  and — " 

"  There — I  see  that ;  don't  put  up  another  chip  till  I  look 
at  my  hand.  A  good  man,  says  you  ?  Pard,  it  ain't  no  name 
for  it.  He  was  the  best  man  that  ever — pard,  you  would 
have  doted  on  that  man.  He  could  lam  any  galoot  of  his 
inches  in  America.  It  was  him  that  put  down  the  riot  last 
election  before  it  got  a  start ;  and  everybody  said  he  was  the 
only  man  that  could  have  done  it.  He  waltzed  in  with  a 
spanner  in  one  hand  and  a  trumpet  in  the  other,  and  sent 
fourteen  men  home  on  a  shutter  in  less  than  three  minutes.  He 
had  that  riot  all  broke  up  and  prevented  nice  before  anybody 
ever  got  a  chance  to  strike  a  blow.  He  was  always  for  peace, 
and  he  would  have  peace — he  could  not  stand  disturbances. 
Pard,  he  was  a  great  loss  to  this  town.  It  would  please  the 
boys  if  you  could  chip  in  something  like  that  and  do  him  jus 
tice.  Here  once  when  the  Micks  got  to  throwing  stones 
through  the  Methodis'  Sunday  school  windows,  Buck  Fanshaw, 
all  of  his  own  notion,  shut  up  his  saloon  and  took  a  couple  of 
six-shooters  and  mounted  guard  over  the  Sunday  school.  Says 
he,  '  ~No  Irish  need  apply ! '  And  they  didn't.  He  was  the 
bulliest  man  in  the  mountains,  pard !  He  could  run  faster, 
jump  higher,  hit  harder,  and  hold  more  tangle-foot  whisky 
without  spilling  it  than  any  man  in  seventeen  counties.  Put 
that  in,  pard — it'll  please  the  boys  more  than  anything  you 
could  say.  And  you  can  say,  pard,  that  he  never  shook  his 
mother." 

"  Never  shook  his  mother  ? " 

"  That's  it — any  of  the  boys  will  tell  you  so." 

"  Well,  but  why  should  he  shake  her  ? " 

"  That's  what  /  say — but  some  people  does." 

"  Not  people  of  any  repute  ? " 

"  Well,  some  that  averages  pretty  so-so." 

"In  my  opinion  the  man  that  would  offer  personal  vio 
lence  to  his  own  mother,  ought  to — 

"  Cheese  it,  pard ;  you've  banked  your  ball  clean  outside 
the  string.  What  I  was  a  drivin'  at,  was,  that  he  never 


K>M 


THE    JfU-NEKAL    CEREMONIES. 


337 


throwed  of  on  his  mother  —  don't  you  see?     No  indeedy.     He 

give  her  a  house  to  live  in,  and  town  lots,  and  plenty  of  money  ; 

and  he  looked  after  her  and  took  care  of  her  all  the  time  ;  and 

when  she  was  down  with  the  small-pox  I'm  d  —  d  if  he  didn't 

set  up  nights  and  nuss  her  himself!    Beg  your  pardon  for  say 

ing  it,  but 

it     hopped 

out      too 

quick      for 

yours     tru 

ly.   You've 

treated  me 

like  a  gen- 

t  1  e  in  a  n  , 

pard,  and  I 

ain't    the 

man  to  hurt 

your     feel 

ings  inten 

tional.      1 

think    you 

're     white. 

I  think  you're  a  square  man,  pard.    I  like  you,  and  I'll  lick  any 

man  that  don't.     I'll  lick  him  till  he  can't  tell  himself  from  a 

last  year's  corpse  !    Put  it  there  !  "    [Another  fraternal  hand 

shake  —  and  exit.] 

The  obsequies  were  all  that  "  the  boys  "  could  desire.  Such 
a  marvel  of  funeral  pomp  had  never  been  seen  in  Virginia.  The 
plumed  hearse,  the  dirge-breathing  brass  bands,  the  closed  marts 
of  business,  the  flags  drooping  at  half  mast,  the  long,  plodding 
procession  of  uniformed  secret  societies,  military  battalions  and 
fire  companies,  draped  engines,  carriages  of  officials,  and  citi 
zens  in  vehicles  and  on  foot,  attracted  multitudes  of  spectators 
to  the  sidewalks,  roofs  and  windows  ;  and  for  years  afterward, 
the  degree  of  grandeur  attained  by  any  civic  display  in  Virginia 
was  determined  by  comparison  with  Buck  Fanshaw's  funeral. 

Scotty  Briggs,  as  a  pall-bearer  and  a  mourner,  occupied  a 
prominent  place  at  the  funeral,  and  when  the  sermon  was 


DIDN'T  SHOOK  HIS  MOTHER. 


338 


SCOTTY    BECOMES    A    CHRISTIAN. 


finished  and  the  last  sentence  of  tlie  prayer  for  the  dead  man's 
soul  ascended,  he  responded,  in  a  low  voice,  but  with  feeling : 
"  AMEN.     No  Irish  need  apply." 

As  the  bulk  of  the  response  was  without  apparent  relevancy, 
it  was  probably  nothing  more  than  a  humble  tribute  to  the 
memory  of  the  friend  that  was  gone ;  for,  as  Scotty  had  once 
said,  it  was  "  his  word." 

Scotty  Briggs,  in  after  days,  achieved  the  distinction  of  be 
coming  the  only  convert  to  religion  that  was  ever  gathered 
from  the  Virginia  roughs ;  and  it  transpired  that  the  man  who 
had  it  in  him  to  espouse  the  quarrel  of  the  weak  out  of  inborn 
nobility  of  spirit  was  no  mean  timber  whereof  to  construct  a 
Christian.  The  making  him  one  did  not  warp  his  generosity 
or  diminish  his  courage ;  on  the  contrary  it  gave  intelligent 

direction  to 
the  one  and 
a  broader 
field  to  the 
other.  If 
his  Sunday- 
school  class 
pro  gressed 
faster  than 
the  other 
classes,  was 
it  matter  for 
wonder?  I 
think  not. 
He  talked  to 

his  pioneer  small-fry  in  a  language  they  understood !  It  was 
my  large  privilege,  a  month  before  he  died,  to  hear  him  tell  the 
beautiful  story  of  Joseph  and  his  brethren  to  his  class  "  with 
out  looking  at  the  book."  I  leave  it  to  the  reader  to  fancy 
what  it  "was  like,  as  it  fell,  riddled  with  slang,  from  the  lips  of 
that  grave,  earnest  teacher,  and  was  listened  to  by  his  little 
learners  with  a  consuming  interest  that  showed  that  they  were 
as  unconscious  as  he  was  that  any  violence  was  being  done  to 
the  sacred  proprieties ! 


SCOTTY  AS  A  SUNDAY-SCHOOL  TEACHER. 


CHAPTER   XLVIII. 

THE  first  twenty-six  graves  in  the  Virginia  cemetery  were 
occupied  by  murdered  men.  So  everybody  said,  so 
everybody  believed,  and  so  they  will  always  say  and  believe. 
The  reason  why  there  was  so  much  slaughtering  done,  was, 
that  in  a  new  mining  district  the  rough  element  predomi 
nates,  and  a  person  is  not  respected  until  he  has  "  killed  his 
man."  That  was  the  very  expression  used. 

If  an  unknown  individual  arrived,  they  did  not  inquire  if 
he  was  capable,  honest,  industrious,  but — had  he  killed  his 
man  ?  If  he  had  not,  he  gravitated  to  his  natural  and  proper 
position,  that  of  a  man  of  small  consequence ;  if  he  had,  the 
cordiality  of  his  reception  was  graduated  according  to  the 
number  of  his  dead.  It  was  tedious  work  struggling  up  to  a 
position  of  influence  with  bloodless  hands  ;  but  when  a  man 
came  with  the  blood  of  half  a  dozen  men  on  his  soul,  his  worth 
was  recognized  at  once  and  his  acquaintance  sought. 

In  Nevada,  for  a  time,  the  lawyer,  the  editor,  the  banker, 
the  chief  desperado,  the  chief  gambler,  and  the  saloon  keeper, 
occupied  the  same  level  in  society,  and  it  was  the  highest. 
The  cheapest  and  easiest  way  to  become  an  influential  man 
and  be  looked  up  to  by  the  community  at  large,  was  to  stand 
behind  a  bar,  wear  a  cluster-diamond  pin,  and  sell  whisky.  I 
am  riot  sure  but  that  the  saloon-keeper  held  a  shade  higher 
rank  than  any  other  member  of  society.  His  opinion  4  had 
weight.  It  was  his  privilege  to  say  how  the  elections  should 


340 


THE    MOST    INFLUENTIAL    CITIZEN. 


go.  "No  great  movement  could  succeed  without  the  counte 
nance  and  direction  of  the  saloon-keepers.  It  was  a  high  favor 
when  the  chief  saloon-keeper  consented  to  serve  in  the  legis 
lature  or  the  board  of  aldermen.  Youthful  ambition  hardly 


THE  MAN  WHO  HAD   KILLED  A  DOZEN. 


aspired  so  much  to  the  honors  of  the  law,  or  the  army  and 
navy  as  to  the  dignity  of  proprietorship  in  a  saloon. 

To  be  a  saloon-keeper  and  kill  a  man  was  to  be  illustrious. 
Hence  the  reader  will  not  be  surprised  to  learn  that  more 
than  one  man  w^as  killed  in  Nevada  under  hardly  the  pretext 
of  provocation,  so  impatient  was  the  slayer  to  achieve  reputa 
tion  and  throw  off  the  galling  sense  of  being  held  in  indifferent 


OUR    JURY    SYSTEM    CONSIDERED.  341 

repute  by  his  associates.  I  knew  two  youths  who  tried  to 
"  kill  their  men  "  for  no  other  reason — and  got  killed  them 
selves  for  their  pains.  "  There  goes  the  man  that  killed  Bill 
Adams  "  was  higher  praise  and  a  sweeter  sound  in  the  ears  of 
this  sort  of  people  than  any  other  speech  that  admiring  lips 
could  utter. 

The  men  who  murdered  Virginia's  original  twenty-six 
cemetery-occupants  were  never  punished.  Why  ?  Because 
Alfred  the  Great,  when  he  invented  trial  by  jury,  and  knew 
that  he  had  admirably  framed  it  to  secure  justice  in  his  age  of 
the  world,  was  not  aware  that  in  the  nineteenth  century  the 
condition  of  things  would  be  so  entirely  changed  that  unless 
he  rose  from  the  grave  and  altered  the  jury  plan  to  meet  the 
emergency,  it  would  prove  the  most  ingenious  and  infallible 
agency  for  defeating  justice  that  human  wisdom  could  con 
trive.  For  how  could  he  imagine  that  we  simpletons  would 
go  on  using  his  jury  plan  after  circumstances  had  stripped  it 
of  its  usefulness,  any  more  than  he  could  imagine  that  we 
would  go  on  using  his  candle-clock  after  we  had  invented 
chronometers?  In  his  day  news  could  not  travel  fast,  and 
hence  he  could  easily  find  a  jury  of  honest,  intelligent  men 
who  had  not  heard  of  the  case  they  were  called  to  try — but  in 
our  day  of  telegraphs  and  newspapers  his  plan  compels  us  to 
swear  in  juries  composed  of  fools  and  rascals,  because  the 
system  rigidly  excludes  honest  men  and  men  of  brains. 

I  remember  one  of  those  sorrowful  farces,  in  Virginia, 
which  we  call  a  jury  trial.  A  noted  desperado  killed  Mr.  B., 
a  good  citizen,  in  the  most  wanton  and  cold-blooded  way. 
Of  course  the  papers  were  full  of  it,  and  all  men  capable  of 
reading,  read  about  it.  And  of  course  all  men  not  deaf  and 
dumb  and  idiotic,  talked  about  it.  A  jury-list  wras  made  out, 
and  Mr.  B.  L.,  a  prominent  banker  and  a  valued  citizen,  was 
questioned  precisely  as  he  would  have  been  questioned  in  any 
court  in  America : 

"  Have  you  heard  of  this  homicide  ?  " 

«  Yes." 

"  Have  you  held  conversations  upon  the  subject  ? " 


342  SPECIMEN    JURORS. 

"Yes." 

"  Have  you  formed  or  expressed  opinions  about  it  ? " 

"Yes."" 

"  Have  you  read  the  newspaper  accounts  of  it  ? " 

"Yes." 

""We  do  not  want  you." 

A  minister,  intelligent,  esteemed,  and  greatly  respected; 
a  merchant  of  high  character  and  known  probity ;  a  mining 
superintendent  of  intelligence  and  unblemished  reputation ;  a 
quartz  mill  owner  of  excellent  standing,  were  all  questioned  in 
the  same  way,  and  all  set  aside.  Each  said  the  public  talk  and 
the  newspaper  reports  had  not  so  biased  his  mind  but  that 
sworn  testimony  would  overthrow  his  previously  formed  opin 
ions  and  enable  him  to  render  a  verdict  without  prejudice  and 
in  accordance  with  the  facts.  But  of  course  such  men  could 
not  be  trusted  with  the  case.  Ignoramuses  alone  could  mete 
out  unsullied  justice. 

When  the  peremptory  challenges  were  all  exhausted,  a  jury 
of  twelve  men  was  impaneled — a  jury  who  swrore  they  had 
neither  heard,  read,  talked  about  nor  expressed  an  opinion 
concerning  a  murder  which  the  very  cattle  in  the  corrals,  the 
Indians  in  the  sage-brush  and  the  stones  in  the  streets  were 


THE   UNPREJUDICED  JUKY. 


cognizant  of!  It  was  a  jury  composed  of  two  desperadoes, 
two  low  beer-house  politicians,  three  bar-keepers,  twu  ranchmen 
who  could  not  read,  and  three  dull,  stupid,  human  donkeys ! 


DISABILITY    INFLICTED    ON    INTELLIGENCE.     343 

It  actually  came  out  afterward,  that  one  of  these  latter  thought 
that  incest  and  arson  were  the  same  thing. 

The  verdict  rendered  by  this  jury  was,  Not  Guilty.  "What 
else  could  one  expect  ? 

The  jury  system  puts  a  ban  upon  intelligence  and  honesty, 
and  a  premium  upon  ignorance,  stupidity  and  perjury.  It  is 
a  shame  that  we  must  continue  to  use  a  worthless  system  be 
cause  it  was  good  a  thousand  years  ago.  In  this  age,  w^hen  a 
gentleman  of  high  social  standing,  intelligence  and  probity, 
swears  that  testimony  given  under  solemn  oath  will  outweigh, 
with  him,  street  talk  and  newspaper  reports  based  upon  mere 
hearsay,  he  is  worth  a  hundred  jurymen  who  will  swear  to 
their  own  ignorance  and  stupidity,  and  justice  would  be  far 
safer  in  his  hands  than  in  theirs.  Why  could  not  the  jury  law 
be  so  altered  as  to  give  men  of  brains  and  honesty  an  equal 
chance  with  fools  and  miscreants?  Is  it  right  to  show  the 
present  favoritism  to  one  class  of  men  and  inflict  a  disability 
on  another,  in  a  land  whose  boast  is  that  all  its  citizens  are 
free  and  equal  ?  I  am  a  candidate  for  the  legislature.  I  de 
sire  to  tamper  with  the  jury  law.  I  wish  to  so  alter  it  as  to 
put  a  premium  on  intelligence  and  character,  and  close  the 
jury  box  against  idiots,  blacklegs,  and  people  who  do  not  read 
newspapers.  But  no  doubt  I  shall  be  defeated — every  effort 
I  make  to  save  the  country  "  misses  fire." 

My  idea,  when  I  began  this  chapter,  was  to  say  some 
thing  about  desperadoism  in  the  "flush  times"  of  Nevada. 
To  attempt  a  portrayal  of  that  era  and  that  land,  and  leave 
out  the  blood  and  carnage,  would  be  like  portraying  Mormon- 
dom  and  leaving  out  polygamy.  The  desperado  stalked  the 
streets  with  a  swagger  graded  according  to  the  number  of  his 
homicides,  and  a  nod  of  recognition  from  him  was  sufficient 
to  make  a  humble  admirer  happy  for  the  rest  of  the  day. 
The  deference  that  was  paid  to  a  desperado  of  wide  reputa 
tion,  and  who  "kept  his  private  graveyard,"  as  the  phrase 
went,  was  marked,  and  cheerfully  accorded.  When  he  moved 
along  the  sidewalk  in  his  excessively  long-tailed  frock-coat, 
shiny  stump-toed  boots,  and  with  dainty  little  slouch  hat 


DESPERADO    ADMIRED. 


tipped  over  left  eye,  tlie  small-fry  roughs  made  room  for  his 
majesty  ;  when  he  entered  the  restaurant,  the  waiters  deserted 
bankers  and  merchants  to  overwhelm  him  with  obsequious 

service  ;  when  he 
shouldered  his  way 
to  a  bar,  the  shoul- 
dered  parties 
wheeled  i  n  d  i  g  - 
nantly,  recognized 
him,  and — apolo 
gized.  They  got 
a  look  in  return 
that  froze  their 
marrow,  and  by 
that  time  a  curled 
and  breast-pinned 
bar  keeper  was 
beaming  over  the 
counter,  proud  of 
the  established  ac 
quaintanceship  that 
permitted  such  a  familiar  form  of  speech  as  : 

"How  're  ye,  Billy,  old  fel  ?     Glad  to  see  you.     What'll 
you  take — the  old  thing  ?" 

The  "old  thing"  meant  his  customary  drink,  of  course. 
The  best  known  names  in  the  Territory  of  Nevada  were 
those  belonging  to  these  long-tailed  heroes  of  the  revolver. 
Orators,  Governors,  capitalists  and  leaders  of  the  legislature 
enjoyed  a  degree  of  fame,  but  it  seemed  local  and  meagre  when 
contrasted  with  the  fame  of  such  men  as  Sam  Brown,  Jack 
Williams,  Billy  Mulligan,  Farmer  Pease,  Sugarfoot  Mike, 
Pock -Marked  Jake,  El  Dorado  Johnny,  Jack  McNabb,  Joe 
McGee,  Jack  Han-is,  Six-fingered  Pete,  etc.,  etc.  There  was 
/a  long  list  of  them.  They  were  brave,  reckless  men,  and 
traveled  with  their  lives  in  their  hands.  To  give  them  their 
due,  they  did  their  killing  principally  among  themselves,  and 


A  DESPERADO  GIVING  REFERENCE. 


A    SPECIMEN    CHARACTER.  345 

seldom  molested  peaceable  citizens,  for  they  considered  it 
small  credit  to  add  to  their  trophies  so  cheap  a  bauble  as  the 
death  of  a  man  who  was  "  not  on  the  shoot,"  as  they  phrased 
it.  They  killed  each  other  on  slight  provocation,  and  hoped 
and  expected  to  be  killed  themselves — for  they  held  it  almost 
shame  to  die  otherwise  than  "with  their  boots  on,"  as  they 
expressed  it. 

I  remember  an  instance  of  a  desperado's  contempt  for  such 
small  game  as  a  private  citizen's  life.  I  was  taking  a  late 
supper  in  a  restaurant  one  night,  with  two  reporters  and  a 
little  printer  named — Brown,  for  instance — any  name  will  do. 
Presently  a  stranger  with  a  long-tailed  coat  on  came  in,  and 
not  noticing  Brown's  hat,  which  was  lying  in  a  chair,  sat  down 
on  it.  Little  Brown  sprang  up  and  became  abusive  in  a 
moment.  The  stranger  smiled,  smoothed  out  the  hat,  and 
offered  it  to  Brown  with  profuse  apologies  couched  in  caustic 
sarcasm,  and  begged  Brown  not  to  destroy  him.  Brown  threw 
off  his  coat  and  challenged  the  man  to  fight — abused  him, 
threatened  him,  impeached  his  courage,  and  urged  and  even 
implored  him  to  fight;  and  in  the  meantime  the  smiling 
stranger  placed  himself  under  our  protection  in  mock  distress. 
But  presently  he  assumed  a  serious  tone,  and  said : 

"Very  well,  gentlemen,  if  we  must  fight,  we  must,  I  sup 
pose.  But  don't  rush  into  danger  and  then  say  I  gave  you  no 
warning.  I  am  more  than  a  match  for  all  of  you  when  I  get 
started.  I  will  give  you  proofs,  and  then  if  my  friend  here 
still  insists,  I  will  try  to  accommodate  him." 

The  table  we  were  sitting  at  was  about  five  feet  long,  and 
unusually  cumbersome  and  heavy.  He  asked  us  to  put  our 
hands  on  the  dishes  and  hold  them  in  their  places  a  moment 
— one  of  them  was  a  large  oval  dish  with  a  portly  roast  on  it. 
Then  he  sat  down,  tilted  up  one  end  of  the  table,  set  two  of 
the  legs  on  his  knees,  took  the  end  of  the  table '  between  his 
teeth,  took  his  hands  away,  and  pulled  down  with  his  teeth  till 
the  table  came  up  to  a  level  position,  dishes  and  all !  He  said 
he  could  lift  a  keg  of  nails  with  his  teeth.  He  picked  up  a 
common  glass  tumbler  and  bit  a  semi-circle  out  of  it.  Then 


346 


SATISFACTION    WITHOUT    FIGHTING. 


lie  opened  his  bosom  and  showed  us  a  net-work  of  knife  and 
bullet  scars ;  showed  us  more  on  his  arms  and  face,  and 
said  he  believed  he  had  bullets  enough  in  his  body  to  make  a 


SATISFYING  A  FOE. 


pig  of  lead.  He  was  armed  to  the  teeth.  He  closed  with  the 
remark  that  he  was  Mr.  -  -  of  Cariboo — a  celebrated  name 
whereat  we  shook  in  our  shoes.  I  would  publish  the  name, 
but  for  the  suspicion  that  he  might  come  and  carve  me.  He 
finally  inquired  if  Brown  still  thirsted  for  blood.  Brown 
turned  the  thing  over  in  his  mind  a  moment,  and  then — asked 
him  to  supper. 

"With  the  permission  of  the  reader,  I  will  group  together, 
in  the  next  chapter,  some  samples  of  life  in  our  small  moun 
tain  village  in  the  old  days  of  desperadoism.  I  was  there  at 
the  time.  The  reader  will  observe  peculiarities  in  our  official 
society ;  and  he  will  observe  also,  an  instance  of  how,  in  new 
countries,  murders  breed  murders. 


A 


CHAPTEE   XLIX. 

extract  or  two  from  the  newspapers  of  the  day  will 
furnish  a  photograph  that  can  need  no  embellishment : 

FATAL  SHOOTING  AFFRAY. — An  affray  occurred,  last  evening,  in  a  billiard 
saloon  on  C  street,  between  Deputy  Marshal  Jack  Williams  and  Wm.  Brown, 
which  resulted  in  the  immediate  death  of  the  latter.  There  had  been  some 
difficulty  between  the  parties  for  several  months. 

An  inquest  was  immediately  held,  and  the  following  testimony  adduced : 
Officer  GEO.  BIRDSALL,  sworn,  says : — I  was  told  Wm.  Brown  was  drunk 
and  was  looking  for  Jack  Williams ;  so  soon  as  I  heard  that  I  started  for  the 
parties  to  prevent  a  collision  ;  went  into  the  billiard  saloon  ;  saw  Billy  Brown 
running  around,  saying  if  anybody  had  anything  against  him  to  show  cause  ; 
he  was  talking  in  a  boisterous  manner,  and  officer  Perry  took  him  to  the 
other  end  of  the  room  to  talk  to  him  ;  Brown  came  back  to  me  ;  remarked 
to  me  that  he  thought  he  was  as  good  as  anybody,  and  knew  how  to  take 
care  of  himself ;  he  passed  by  me  and  went  to  the  bar ;  don't  know  whether 
he  drank  or  not ;  Williams  was  at  the  end  of  the  billiard-table,  next  to  the 
stairway  ;  Brown,  after  going  to  the  bar,  came  back  and  said  he  was  as  good 
as  any  man  in  the  world ;  he  had  then  walked  out  to  the  end  of  the  first 
billiard-table  from  the  bar ;  I  moved  closer  to  them,  supposing  there  would 
be  a  fight ;  as  Brown  drew  his  pistol  I  caught  hold  of  it ;  he  had  fired  one 
shot  at  Williams ;  don't  know  the  effect  of  it ;  caught  hold  of  him  with  one 
hand,  and  took  hold  of  the  pistol  and  turned  it  up  ;  think  he  fired  once  after 
I  caught  hold  of  the  pistol ;  I  wrenched  the  pistol  from  him  ;  walked  to  the 
end  of  the  billiard-table  and  told  a  party  that  I  had  Brown's  pistol,  and  to 
stop  shooting ;  I  think  four  shots  were  fired  in  all ;  after  walking  out,  Mr. 
Foster  remarked  that  Brown  was  shot  dead. 

Oh,  there  was  no  excitement  about  it — he  merely  "re 
marked  "  the  small  circumstance ! 

Four  months  later  the  following  item  appeared  in  the  same 
paper  (the  Enterprise).  In  this  item  the  name  of  one  of  the 


348  A    SPECIMEN    CITY    OFFICIAL. 

city  officers  above  referred  to  (Deputy  Marshal  Jack    Wil 
liams)  occurs  again : 

ROBBERY  AND  DESPERATE  AFFRAY. — On  Tuesday  night,  a  German  named 
Charles  Hurtzal,  engineer  in  a  mill  at  Silver  City,  came  to  this  place,  and 
visited  the  hurdy-gurdy  house  on  B  street.  The  music,  dancing  and  Teu 
tonic  maidens  awakened  memories  of  Faderland  until  our  German  friend 
was  carried  away  with  rapture.  He  evidently  had  money,  and  was  spend 
ing  it  freely.  Late  in  the  evening  Jack  Williams  and  Andy  Blessington 
invited  him  down  stairs  to  take  a  cup  of  coffee.  Williams  proposed  a  game 
of  cards  and  went  up  stairs  to  procure  a  deck,  but  not  finding  any  returned. 
On  the  stairway  he  met  the  German,  and  drawing  his  pistol  knocked  him 
down  and  rifled  his  pockets  of  some  seventy  dollars.  Hurtzal  dared  give 
no  alarm,  as  he  was  told,  with  a  pistol  at  his  head,  if  he  made  any  noise  or 
exposed  them,  they  would  blow  his  brains  out.  So  effectually  was  he 
frightened  that  he  made  no  complaint,  until  his  friends  forced  him.  Yester 
day  a  warrant  was  issued,  but  the  culprits  had  disappeared. 

This  efficient  city  officer,  Jack  Williams,  had  the  common 
reputation  of  being  a  burglar,  a  highwayman  and  a  desperado. 
It  was  said  that  he  had  several  times  drawn  his  revolver  and 
levied  money  contributions  on  citizens  at  dead  of  night  in  the 
public  streets  of  Virginia. 

Five  months  after  the  above  item  appeared,  Williams  was 
assassinated  while  sitting  at  a  card  table  one  night ;  a  gun  was 
thrust  through  the  crack  of  the  door  and  Williams  dropped 
from  his  chair  riddled  with  balls.  It  was  said,  at  the  time, 
that  Williams  had  been  for  some  time  aware  that  a  party 
of  his  own  sort  (desperadoes)  had  sworn  away  his  life ;  and 
it  was  generally  believed  among  the  people  that  Williams's 
friends  and  enemies  would  make  the  assassination  memorable — 
and  useful,  too — by  a  wholesale  destruction  of  each  other.* 

*  However,  one  prophecy  was  verified,  at  any  rate.  It  was  asserted  by 
the  desperadoes  that  one  of  their  brethren  (Joe  McGee,  a  special  policeman) 
was  known  to  be  the  conspirator  chosen  by  lot  to  assassinate  Williams ;  and 
they  also  asserted  that  doom  had  been  pronounced  against  McGee,  and  that 
he  would  be  assassinated  in  exactly  the  same  manner  that  had  been  adopted 
for  the  destruction  of  Williams — a  prophecy  which  came  true  a  year  later. 
After  twelve  months  of  distress  (for  McGee  saw  a  fancied  assassin  in  every 
man  that  approached  him),  he  made  the  last  of  many  efforts  to  get  out  of 
the  country  unwatched.  He  went  to  Carson  and  sat  down  in  a  saloon  to 
wait  for  the  stage — it  would  leave  at  four  in  the  morning.  But  as  the  night 


PURSUING    A    VICTIM.  349 

It  did  not  so  happen,  but  still,  times  were  not  dull  during  the 
next  twenty-four  hours,  for  within  that  time  a  woman  was  killed 
by  a  pistol  shot,  a  man  was  brained  with  a  slung  shot,  and  a 
man  named  Reeder  was  also  disposed  of  permanently.  Some 
matters  in  the  Enterprise  account  of  the  killing  of  Reeder  are 
worth  noting — especially  the  accommodating  complaisance  of  a 
Virginia  justice  of  the  peace.  The  italics  in  the  following  nar 
rative  are  mine : 

MORE  CUTTING  AND  SHOOTING. — The  devil  seems  to  have  again  broken 
loose  in  our  town.  Pistols  and  guns  explode  and  knives  gleam  in  our  streets 
as  in  early  times.  When  there  has  been  a  long  season  of  quiet,  people  are 
slow  to  wet  their  hands  in  blood;  but  once  blood  is  spilled,  cutting  and 
shooting  come  easy.  Night  before  last  Jack  Williams  was  assassinated, 
and  yesterday  forenoon  we  had  more  bloody  work,  growing  out  of  the  kill 
ing  ol  Williams,  and  on  the  same  street  in  which  he  met  his  death.  It 
appears  that  Tom  Reeder,  a  friend  of  Williams,  and  George  Gumbert  were 
talking,  at  the  meat  market  of  the  latter,  about  the  killing  of  Williams  the 
previous  night,  when  Reeder  said  it  was  a  most  cowardly  act  to  shoot  a  man 
in  such  a  way,  giving  him  "  no  show."  Gumbert  said  that  Williams  had 
"  as  good  a  show  as  he  gave  Billy  Brown,"  meaning  the  man  killed  by  Wil 
liams  last  March.  Reeder  said  it  was  a  d — d  lie,  that  Williams  had  no  sfiow 
at  all.  At  this,  Gumbert  drew  a  knife  and  stabbed  Reeder,  cutting  him  in 
two  places  in  the  back.  One  stroke  of  the  knife  cut  into  the  sleeve  of 
Reeder's  coat  and  passed  downward  in  a  slanting  direction  through  his 
clothing,  and  entered  his  body  at  the  small  of  the  back  ;  another  blow 
struck  more  squarely,  and  made  a  much  more  dangerous  wound.  Gumbert 
gave  himself  up  to  the  officers  of  justice,  and  was  shortly  after  discharged 
by  Justice  Atwill,  on  his  own  recognizance,  to  appear  for  trial  at  six  o'clock 
in  the  evening.  In  the  meantime  Reeder  had  been  taken  into  the  office  of 
Dr.  Owens,  where  his  wounds  were  properly  dressed.  One  of  his  wounds  was 
considered  quite  dangerous,  and  it  was  thought  by  many  that  it  would  prove 

waned  and  the  crowd  thinned,  he  grew  uneasy,  and  told  the  bar-keeper  that 
assassins  were  on  his  track.  The  bar-keeper  told  him  to  stay  in  the  middle 
of  the  room,  then,  and  not  go  near  the  door,  or  the  window  by  the  stove. 
But  a  fatal  fascination  seduced  him  to  the  neighborhood  of  the  stove  every 
now  and  then,  and  repeatedly  the  bar-keeper  brought  him  back  to  the  middle 
of  the  room  and  warned  him  to  remain  there.  But  he  could  not.  At  three  in 
the  morning  he  again  returned  to  the  stove  and  sat  down  by  a  stranger.  Be 
fore  the  bar-keeper  could  get  to  him  with  another  warning  whisper,  some 
one  outside  fired  through  the  window  and  riddled  McGee's  breast  with 
plugs,  killing  him  almost  instantly.  By  the  same  discharge  the  stranger  at 
McGee's  side  also  received  attentions  which  proved  fatal  in  the  course  ot 
two  or  three  days. 


350  A    STREET    FIGHT. 

fatal.  But  being  considerably  under  the  influence  of  liquor,  Reeder  did  not 
feel  his  wounds  as  he  otherwise  would,  and  he  got  up  and  went  into  the  street. 
He  went  to  the  meat  market  and  renewed  his  quarrel  with  Gumbert,  threat 
ening  his  life.  Friends  tried  to  interfere  to  put  a  stop  to  the  quarrel  and 
get  the  parties  away  from  each  other.  In  the  Fashion  Saloon  Reeder  made 
threats  against  the  life  of  Gumbert,  saying  he  would  kill  him,  and  it  is 
said  that  he  requested  the  officers  not  to  arrest  Gumbert,  as  he  intended  to  kill 
him.  After  these  threats  Gumbert  went  off  and  procured  a  double-barreled 
ehot  gun,  loaded  with  buck-shot  or  revolver  balls,  and  went  after  Reeder. 
Two  or  three  persons  were  assisting  him-  along  the  street,  trying  to  get  him 
home,  and  had  him  just  in  front  of  the  store  of  Klopstock  &  Harris,  when 
Gumbert  came  across  toward  him  from  the  opposite  side  of  the  street  with 
his  gun.  He  came  up  within  about  ten  or  fifteen  feet  of  Reeder,  and  called  out 
to  those  with  him  to  "  look  out !  get  out  of  the  way !  "  and  they  had  only  time  to 
heed  the  warning,  when  he  fired.  Reeder  was  at  the  time  attempting  to  screen 
himself  behind  a  large  cask,  which  stood  against  the  awning  post  of  Klop 
stock  &  Harris's  store,  but  some  of  the  balls  took  effect  in  the  lower  part  of 
his  breast,  and  he  reeled  around  forward  and  fell  in  front  of  the  cask.  Gum 
bert  then  raised  his  gun  and  fired  the  second  barrel,  which  missed  Reeder 
and  entered  the  ground.  At  the  time  that  this  occurred,  there  were  a  great 
many  persons  on  the  street  in  the  vicinity,  and  a  number  of  them  called  out 
to  Gumbert,  when  they  saw  him  raise  his  gun,  to  "  hold  on,"  and  "  don't 
shoot ! "  The  cutting  took  place  about  ten  o'clock  and  the  shooting  about 
twelve.  After  the  shooting  the  street  was  instantly  crowded  with  the  in 
habitants  of  that  part  of  the  town,  some  appearing  much  excited  and  laugh 
ing — declaring  that  it  looked  like  the  "  good  old  times  of  '60."  Marshal 
Perry  and  officer  Birdsall  were  near  when  the  shooting  occurred,  and  Gum 
bert  was  immediately  arrested  and  his  gun  taken  from  him,  when  he  was 
marched  off  to  jail.  Many  persons  who  were  attracted  to  the  spot  where  this 
bloody  work  had  just  taken  place,  looked  bewildered  and  seemed  to  be  asking 
themselves  what  was  to  happen  next,  appearing  in  doubt  as  to  whether  the 
killing  mania  had  reached  its  climax,  or  whether  we  were  to  turn  in  and 
have  a  grand  killing  spell,  shooting  whoever  might  have  given  us  offence. 
It  was  whispered  around  that  it  was  not  all  over  yet — five  or  six  more  were 
to  be  killed  before  night.  Reeder  was  taken  to  the  Virginia  City  Hotel, 
and  doctors  called  in  to  examine  his  wounds.  They  found  that  two  or  three 
balls  had  entered  his  right  side ;  one  of  them  appeared  to  have  passed 
through  the  substance  of  the  lungs,  while  another  passed  into  the  liver. 
Two  balls  were  also  found  to  have  struck  one  of  his  legs.  As  some  of  the 
balls  struck  the  cask,  the  wounds  in  Reeder's  leg  were  probably  from  these, 
glancing  downwards,  though  they  might  have  been  caused  by  the  second 
shot  fired.  After  being  shot,  Reeder  said  when  he  got  on  his  feet — smiling 
as  he  spoke — "  It  will  take  better  shooting  than  that  to  kill  me."  The  doc 
tors  consider  it  almost  impossible  for  him  to  recover,  but  as  he  has  an 
excellent  constitution  he  may  survive,  notwithstanding  the  number  and 
dangerous  character  of  the  wounds  he  has  received.  The  town  appears  to 


LIKELIHOOD    OF    PUNISHMENT. 


551 


be  perfectly  quiet  at  present,  as  though  the  late  stormy  times  had  cleared 
our  moral  atmosphere  ;  but  who  can  tell  in  what  quarter  clouds  are  lowering 
or  plots  ripening  ? 

Reeder — or  at  least  what  was  left  of  him — survived  liis 
wounds  two  days!  Nothing  was  ever  done  with  Gumbert. 

Trial  by  jury  is  the  palladium  of  our  liberties.  I  do  not 
know  what  a  palladium  is,  having  never  seen  a  palladium,  but 
it  is  a  good  thing  no  doubt  at  any  rate.  Not  less  than  a  hun 
dred  men  have  been  murdered  in  Nevada — perhaps  I  would 
be  within  bounds  if  I  said  three  hundred — and  as  far  as  I  can 
learn,  only  two  persons  have  suffered  the  death  penalty  there. 
However,  four  or  live  who  had  no  money  and  no  political  influ 
ence  have-  been  punished  by  imprisonment — one  languished  in 
prison  as  much  as  eight  months,  I  think.  However,  I  do  not 
desire  to  be  extravagant — it  may  have  been  less. 


CHAPTEE    L. 

THESE  murder  and  jury  statistics  remind  me  of  a  certain 
very  extraordinary  trial  and  execution  of  twenty  years 
ago ;  it  is  a  scrap  of  history  familiar  to  all  old  Californians, 
and  worthy  to  be  known  by  other  peoples  of  the  earth  that 
love  simple,  straightforward  justice  unencumbered  with  non 
sense.  I  would  apologize  for  this  digression  but  for  the  fact 
that  the  information  I  am  about  to  offer  is  apology  enough  in 
itself.  And  since  I  digress  constantly  anyhow,  perhaps  it  is 
as  well  to  eschew  apologies  altogether  and  thus  prevent  their 
growing  irksome. 

Capt.  Ned  Blakely — that  name  will  answer  as  well  as  any 
other  fictitious  one  (for  he  was  still  with  the  living  at  last  ac 
counts,  and  may  not  desire  to  be  famous) — sailed  ships  out  of 
the  harbor  of  San  Francisco  for  many  years.  He  was  a  stal 
wart,  warm-hearted,  eagle-eyed  veteran,  who  had  been  a  sailor 
nearly  fifty  years — a  sailor  from  early  boyhood.  He  was  a 
rough,  honest  creature,  full  of  pluck,  and  just  as  full  of  hard- 
headed  simplicity,  too.  He  hated  trifling  conventionalities — 
"  business "  was  the  word,  with  him.  He  had  all  a  sailor's 
vindictiveness  against  the  quips  and  quirks  of  the  law,  and 
steadfastly  believed  that  the  first  and  last  aim  and  object  of  the 
law  and  lawyers  was  to  defeat  justice. 

He  sailed  for  the  Chincha  Islands  in  command  of  a  guano 
ship.  He  had  a  fine  crew,  but  his  negro  mate  was  his  pet — 
on  him  he  had  for  years  lavished  his  admiration  and  esteem. 
It  was  Capt.  Ked's  first  voyage  to  the  Chinchas,  but  his  fame 
had  gone  before  him — the  fame  of  being  a  man  who  would 


CAPT.     NED    BLAKELT. 


353 


fight  at  the  dropping  of  a  handkerchief,  when  imposed  upon, 
and  would  stand  no  nonsense.  It  was  a  fame  well  earned. 
Arrived  in  the  islands,  lie  found  that  the  staple  of  conversation 
was  the  exploits  of  one  Bill  Noakes,  a  bully,  the  mate  of  a 
trading  ship.  This  man  had  created  a  small  reign  of  terror 
there.  At  nine  o'clock  at  night,  Capt  Ned,  all  alone,  was 
pacing  his  deck  in  the  starlight.  A  form  ascended  the  side, 
and  approached  him.  Capt.  Ned  said : 

"Who  goes  there?" 

"  I'm  Bill  Noakes,  the  best  man  in  the  islands." 

"  What  do  you  want  aboard  this  ship  ? " 


IMPARTING   INFORMATION. 


"I've  heard  of  Capt.  Ned  Blakely,  and  one  of  us  is  a  better 
man  than  'tother — I'll  know  which,  before  I  go  ashore." 

"You've  come  to  the   right   shop — I'm  your  man.      I'll 
learn  you  to  come  aboard  this  ship  without  an  mvite." 

He   seized   Noakes,  backed   him   against   the   mainmast, 
pounded  his  face  to  a  pulp,  and  then  threw  him  overboard. 
23f 


354:  KILLING    OF    HIS    MATE. 


was  not  convinced.  He  returned  the  next  night, 
got  the  pulp  renewed,  and  went  overboard  head  first,  as  before. 
He  was  satisfied. 

A  week  after  this,  while  Noakes  was  carousing  with  a  sailor 
crowd  on  shore,  at  noonday,  Capt.  Ned's  colored  mate  came 
along,  and  Noakes  tried  to  pick  a  quarrel  with  him.  The 
negro  evaded  the  trap,  and  tried  to  get  away.  Noakes  fol 
lowed  him  up  ;  the  negro  began  to  run  ;  ISToakes  fired  on  him 
with  a  revolver  and  killed  him.  Half  a  dozen  sea-captains 
witnessed  the  whole  affair.  Noakes  retreated  to  the  small 
after-cabin  of  his  ship,  with  two  other  bullies,  and  gave  out 
that  death  would  be  the  portion  of  any  man  that  intruded 
there.  There  was  no  attempt  made  to  follow  the  villains  ; 
there  was  no  disposition  to  do  it,  and  indeed  very  little  thought 
of  such  an  enterprise.  There  were  no  courts  and  no  officers  ; 
there  was  no  government  ;  the  islands  belonged  to  Peru,  and 
Peru  was  far  away  ;  she  had  no  official  representative  on  the 
ground  ;  and  neither  had  any  other  nation. 

However,  Capt.  Xed  was  not  perplexing  his  head  about 
such  things.  They  concerned  him  not.  He  was  boiling  writh 
rage  and  furious  for  justice.  At  nine  o'clock  at  night  he 
loaded  a  double-barreled  gun  with  slugs,  fished  out  a  pair  of 
handcuffs,  got  a  ship's  lantern,  summoned  his  quartermaster, 
and  went  ashore.  He  said  : 

<;  Do  you  see  that  ship  there  at  the  dock?  " 

"Ay-ay,  sir." 

"  It's  the  Yenus." 

"  Ay-ay,  sir-" 

"  You  —  yon  know  me." 

"  Ay-ay,  sir." 

"  Yery  well,  then.  Take  the  lantern.  Carry  it  just  under 
your  chin.  I'll  walk  behind  you  and  rest  this  gun-barrel  on 
your  shoulder,  pointing  forward  —  so.  Keep  your  lantern  well 
up,  so's  I  can  see  things  ahead  of  you  good.  I'm  going  to  march 
in  on  Koakes  —  and  take  him  —  and  jug  the  other  chaps.  If 
you  flinch  —  well,  you  know  me." 

"  Ay-ay,  sir." 


ARRESTING    BILL    NOAKES. 


355 


In  this  order  they  filed  aboard  softly,  arrived  at  Noakes's 
den,  the  quartermaster  pushed  the  door  open,  and  the  lantern 
revealed  the  three  desperadoes  sitting  on  the  floor.  Capt. 
Xed  said  : 

"Tin  Ned  Blakely.     I've  got  you  under  fire.     Don't  you 


A  WALKING  BATTERY. 

move  without  orders — any  of  you.  You  two  kneel  down  in  the 
corner ;  faces  to  the  wall — now.  Bill  Noakes,  put  these  hand 
cuffs  on  ;  now  come  up  close.  Quartermaster,  fasten  'em.  All 
right.  Don't  stir,  sir.  Quartermaster,  put  the  key  in  the  out 
side  of  the  door.  Now,  men,  I'm  going  to  lock  you  two  in  ; 
and  if  you  try  to  burst  through  this  door — well,  you've  heard 
of  me.  Bill  Noakes,  fall  in  ahead,  and  march.  All  set. 
Quartermaster,  lock  the  door." 

Noakes  spent  the  night  on  board  Blakely's  ship,  a  prisoner 
under  strict  guard.  Early  in  the  morning  Capt.  Ned  called  in 
all  the  sea-captains  in  the  harbor  and  invited  them,  with  nauti 
cal  ceremony,  to  be  present  on  board  his  ship  at  nine  o'clock  to 
witness  the  hanging  of  Noakes  at  the  yard-arm ! 


356  CAPT.    BLAKELY'S    VIEWS    OF    JUSTICE. 

"  What !     The  man  has  not  been  tried." 

"  Of  course  he  hasn't.     But  didn't  he  kill  the  nigger? " 

"  Certainly  he  did ;  but  you  are  not  thinking  of  hanging 
him  without  a  trial  I " 

"  Trial !  "What  do  I  want  to  try  him  for,  if  he  killed  the 
nigger?" 

"  Oh,  Capt.  Ned,  this  will  never  do.  Think  how  it  will 
sound." 

"  Sound  be  hanged  !     Didn't  he  Mil  the  nigger  f  " 

"  Certainly,  certainly,  Capt.  Ned, — nobody  denies  that, — 
but—" 

"  Then  I'm  going  to  hang  him,  that's  all.  Everybody  I've 
talked  to  talks  just  the  same  way  you  do.  Everybody  says  he 
killed  the  nigger,  everybody  knows  he  killed  the  nigger,  and  yet 
every  lubber  of  you  wants  him  tried  for  it.  I  don't  understand 
such  bloody  foolishness  as  that.  Tried!  Mind  you,  I  don't 
object  to  trying  him,  if  it's  got  to  be  done  to  give  satisfaction  ; 
and  I'll  be  there,  and  chip  in  and  help,  too ;  but  put  it  off  till 
afternoon — put  it  off  till  afternoon,  for  I'll  have  my  hands 
middling  full  till  after  the  burying— 

"  Why,  what  do  you  mean  ?  Are  you  going  to  hang  him 
any  how — and  try  him  afterward  ? " 

"  Didn't  I  say  I  was  going  to  hang  him  ?  I  never  saw 
such  people  as  you.  What's  the  difference  ?  You  ask  a  favor, 
and  then  you  ain't  satisfied  when  you  get  it.  Before  or  after 's 
all  one — you  know  how  the  trial  will  go.  He  killed  the 
nigger.  Say — I  must  be  going.  If  your  mate  would  like  to 
come  to  the  hanging,  fetch  him  along.  I  like  him." 

There  was  a  stir  in  the  camp.  The  captains  came  in  a 
body  and  pleaded  with  Capt.  Ned  not  to  do  this  rash  thing. 
They  promised  that  they  Avould  create  a  court  composed  of 
eaptains  of  the  best  character ;  they  would  empanel  a  jury ; 
they  would  conduct  everything  in  a  way  becoming  the  serious 
nature  of  the  business  in  hand,  and  give  the  case  an  impartial 
hearing  and  the  accused  a  fair  trial.  And  they  said  it  would 
be  murder,  and  punishable  by  the  American  courts  if  lie  per 
sisted  and  hung  the  accused  on  his  ship.  They  pleaded  hard. 
Capt.  Ned  said : 


BILL    NOAKES    IS    TRIED.  357 

"  Gentlemen,  I'm  not  stubborn  and  I'm  not  unreasonable. 
Fm  always  willing  to  do  just  as  near  right  as  I  can.  How 
long  will  it  take  ? " 

*"  Probably  only  a  little  while/' 

"  And  can  I  take  him  up  the  shore  and  hang  him  as  soon 
as  you  are  done  ? " 

"If  he  is  proven  guilty  he  shall  be  hanged  without  un 
necessary  delay." 

"  If  he's  proven  guilty.  Great  Neptune,  airit  he  guilty  ? 
This  beats  my  time.  Why  you  all  know  he's  guilty." 

But  at  last  they  satisfied  him  that  they  were  projecting 
nothing  underhanded.  Then  he  said : 

"  Well,  all  right.  You  go  on  and  try  him  and  I'll  go  down 
and  overhaul  his  conscience  and  prepare  him  to  go — like 
enough  he  needs  it,  and  I  don't  wrant  to  send  him  off  without 
a  show  for  hereafter." 

This  was  another  obstacle.  They  finally  convinced  him 
that  it  was  necessary  to  have  the  accused  in  court.  Then  they 
said  they  would  send  a  guard  to  bring  him. 

"  No,  sir,  I  prefer  to  fetch  him  myself — he  don't  get  out  of 
my  hands.  Besides,  I've  got  to  go  to  the  ship  to  get  a  rope, 
anyway." 

The  court  assembled  with  due  ceremony,  empaneled  a  jury, 
and  presently  Capt.  Ned  entered,  leading  the  prisoner  with 
one  hand  and  carrying  a  Bible  and  a  rope  in  the  other.  He 
seated  himself  by  the  side  of  his  captive  and  told  the  court  to 
"  up  anchor  and  make  sail."  Then  he  turned  a  searching  eye 
on  the  jury,  and  detected  Noakes's  friends,  the  two  bullies. 
He  strode  over  and  said  to  them  confidentially  : 

"  You're  here  to  interfere,  you  see.  Now  you  vote  right,, 
do  you  hear  ? — or  else  there  '11  be  a  double-barreled  inquest 
here  when  this  trial's  off,  and  your  remainders  will  go  home 
in  a  couple  of  baskets." 

The  caution  was  not  without  fruit.  The  jury  was  a  unit 
—the  verdict,  "  Guilty." 

Capt.  Ned  sprung  to  his  feet  and  said  : 

"  Come  along — you're   my  meat    nowy  my  lad,  anyway. 


358 


CAPT.  BLAKELT  AS  A  CHAPLAIN. 


Gentlemen  you've  done  yourselves  proud.  I  invite  you  all  to 
come  and  see  that  I  do  it  all  straight.  Follow  me  to  the 
canyon,  a  mile  above  here." 

The  court  informed  him  that  a  sheriff  had  been  appointed 
to  do  the  hanging,  and — 

Capt.  Ned's  patience  was  at  an  end.  His  wrath  was? 
boundless.  The  subject  of  a  sheriff  was  judiciously  dropped. 

When  the  crowd  arrived  at  the  canyon,  Capt.  Ned  climbed 
a  tree  and  arranged  the  halter,  then  came  down  and  noosed  his 
man.  He  opened  his  Bible,  and  laid  aside  his  hat.  Selecting 
a  chapter  at  random,  he  read  it  through,  in  a  deep  bass  voice 

and  with  sincere 
solemnity.  Then  he 


Lad,  you  are 
about  to  go  aloft  and 
give  an  account  of 
yourself ;  and  the 
lighter  a  man's  man 
ifest  is,  as  far  as  sin's 
concerned,  the  better 
for  him.  Make  a 
[I  clean  breast,  man, 
and  carry  a  log  with 
you  that'll  bear  in 
spection.  You  killed 
the  nigger?" 

No  reply.  A 
long  pause. 

The  captain  read 
another  chapter, 
time  to  time,  to  impress  the  effect.  Then 


OVERHAULING  HIS  MANIFEST. 


pausing,  from 


he  talked  an  earnest,  persuasive  sermon  to  him,  and  ended 
by  repeating  the  question  : 

"  Did  you  kill  the  nigger  ? " 

No  reply — other  than  a  malignant  scowl.  The  captain 
now  read  the  first  and  second  chapters  of  Genesis,  with  deep 


HE    HANGS    THE    CRIMINAL. 

feeling— paused  a  moment,  closed  the  book  reverently,  and 
said  with  a  perceptible  savor  of  satisfaction  : 

"  There.  Four  chapters.  There's  few  that  would  have 
took  the  pains  with  you  that  I  have." 

Then  he  swung  up  the  condemned,  and  made  the  rope  fast ; 
stood  by  and  timed  him  half  an  hour  with  his  watch,  and  then 
delivered  the  body  to  the  court.  A  little  after,  as  he  stood 
contemplating  the  motionless  figure,  a  doubt  came  into  his 
face ;  evidently  he  felt  a  twinge  of  conscience — a  misgiving — 
and  he  said  with  a  sigh  : 

"  Well,  p'raps  I  ought  to  burnt  him,  maybe.  But  I  was 
trying  to  do  for  the  best" 

When  the  history  of  this  affair  reached  California  (it  was 
in  the  "  early  days")  it  made  a  deal  of  talk,  but  did  not  di 
minish  the  captain's  popularity  in  any  degree.  It  increased  it, 
indeed.  California  had  a  population  then  that  "  inflicted  "  jus 
tice  after  a  fashion  that  was  simplicity  and  primitiveness  itself, 
and  could  therefore  admire  appreciatively  when  the  same 
fashion  was  followed  elsewhere. 


CHAPTER   LI. 

"TTICE  flourished  luxuriantly  during  the  hey-day  of  our 
V  "flush  times."  The  saloons  were  overburdened  with 
custom  ;  so  were  the  police  courts,  the  gambling  dens,  the 
brothels  and  the  jails — unfailing  signs  of  high  prosperity  in  a 
mining  region — in  any  region  for  that  matter.  Is  it  not  so? 
A  crowded  police  court  docket  is  the  surest  of  all  signs 
that  trade  is  brisk  and  money  plenty.  Still,  there  is  one  other 
sign ;  it  comes  last,  but  when  it  does  come  it  establishes  be 
yond  cavil  that  the  "flush  times"  are  at  the  flood.  This  is  the 
birth  of  the  "  literary  "  paper.  The  Weekly  Occidental,  "  de 
voted  to  literature,"  made  its  appearance  in  Virginia.  All  the 
literary  people  were  engaged  to  write  for  it.  Mr.  F.  was  to 
edit  it.  He  was  a  felicitous  skirmisher  with  a  pen,  and  a  man 
who  could  say  happy  things  in  a  crisp,  neat  way.  Once,  while 
editor  of  the  Union,  he  had  disposed  of  a  labored,  incoherent, 
two-column  attack  made  upon  him  by  a  cotemporary,  with  a 
single  line,  which,  at  first  glance,  seemed  to  contain  a  solemn 
and  tremendous  compliment — viz. :  "  THE  LOGIC  OF  OUR  AD 
VERSARY  RESEMBLES  THE  PEACE  OF  GoD," and  left  it  to  the 

reader's  memory  and  after-thought  to  invest  the  remark  with 
another  and  "  more  different "  meaning  by  supplying  for  him 
self  and  at  his  own  leisure  the  rest  of  the  Scripture — "  in  that 
it  passeih  understanding"  He  once  said  of  a  little,  half- 
starved,  wayside  community  that  had  no  subsistence  except 
what  they  could  get  by  preying  upon  chance  passengers  who 
stopped  over  with  them  a  day  when  traveling  by  the  overland 
stage,  that  in  their  Church  service  they  had  altered  the  Lord's 
Prayer  to  read  :  "  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  stranger !  " 


THE  OCCIDENTAL'S  GREAT  NOVEL.       361 

We  expected  great  things  of  the  Occidental.  Of  course  it 
could  not  get  along  without  an  original  novel,  and  so  we  made 
arrangements  to  hurl  into  the  work  the  full  strength  of  the 
company.  Mrs.  F.  was  an  able  romancist  of  the  ineffable 
school — I  know  no  other  name  to  apply  to  a  school  whose 
heroes  are  all  dainty  and  all  perfect.  She  wrote  the  opening 
chapter,  and  introduced  a  lovely  blonde  simpleton  who  talked 
nothing  but  pearls  and  poetry  and  who  was  virtuous  to  the 
verge  of  eccentricity.  She  also  introduced  a  young  French 
Duke  of  aggravated  refinement,  in  love  with  the  blonde. 
Mr.  F.  followed  next  week,  with  a  brilliant  lawyer  who  set 
about  getting  die  Duke's  estates  into  trouble,  and  a  sparkling 
young  lady  of  high  society  who  fell  to  fascinating  the  Duke 
and  impairing  the  appetite  of  the  blonde.  Mr.  D.,  a  dark  and 
bloody  editor  of  one  of  the  dailies,  followed  Mr.  F.,  the  third 


THE  HEROES  AND  HEROINES  OF  THE  STORY. 

week,  introducing  a  mysterious  Koscicrucian  who  transmuted 
metals,  held  consultations  with  the  devil  in  a  cave  at  dead  of 
night,  and  cast  the  horoscope  of  the  several  heroes  and  heroines 
in  such  a  way  as  to  provide  plenty  of  trouble  for  their  future 
careers  and  breed  a  solemn  and  awful  public  interest  in  the 
novel.  He  also  introduced  a  cloaked  and  masked  melodra- 


302       SUMMARY    TREATMENT    OF    ITS    CHARACTERS. 


matic  miscreant,  put  him  on  a  salary  and  set  him  on  the  mid 
night  tract  of  the  Duke  with  a  poisoned  dagger.  He  also 
created  an  Irish  coachman  with  a  rich  brogue  and  placed  him 
in  the  service  of  the  society-young-lady  with  an  ulterior  mis 
sion  to  carry  billet-doux  to  the  Duke. 

About  this  time  there  arrived  in  Virginia  a  dissolute  stran 
ger  with  a  literary  turn  of  mind — rather  seedy  he  was,  but 
very  quiet  and  unassuming ;  almost  diffident,  indeed.  He  was 
so  gentle,  and  his  manners  were  so  pleasing  and  kindly, 
whether  he  was  sober  or  intoxicated,  that  he  made  friends  of 

all  who  came  in  contact  with 
him.  lie  applied  for  literary 
work,  offered  conclusive  ev 
idence  that  he  wielded  an 
easy  and  practiced  pen,  and 
so  Mr.  F.  engaged  him  at 
once  to  help  write  the  novel. 
His  chapter  was  to  follow 
Mr.  D.'s,  and  mine  was  to 
come  next.  Xow  what  does 
this  fellow  do  but  go  off  and 
get  drunk  and  then  proceed 
to  his  quarters  and  set  to 
work  with  his  imagination 
in  a  state  of  chaos,  and  that 
chaos  in  a  condition  of  ex 
travagant  activity.  The  re 
sult  may  be  guessed.  He 
scanned  the  chapters  of  his 
predecessors,  found  plenty 
of  heroes  and  heroines  al 
ready  created,  and  was  satisfied  with  them ;  he  decided  to  in 
troduce  no  more ;  with  all  the  confidence  that  whisky  inspires 
and  all  the  easy  complacency  it  gives  to  its  servant,  he  then 
launched  himself  lovingly  into  his  work  :  he  married  the 
coachman  to  the  society-young-lady  for  the  sake  of  the  scandal ; 
married  the  Duke  to  the  blonde's  stepmother,  for  the  sake  of 
the  sensation ;  stopped  the  desperado's  salary ;  created  a  mis- 


DISSOLUTE   AUTHOR. 


WAR    AMONG    THE    NOVELISTS.  363 

understanding  between  the  devil  and  the  Roscicrucian ;  threw 
the  Duke's  property  into  the  wicked  lawyer's  hands  ;  made  the 
lawyer's  upbraiding  conscience  drive  him  to  drink,  thence  to 
delirium  tremens,  thence  to  suicide;  broke  the  coachman's 
neck  ;  let  his  widow  succumb  to  contumely,  neglect,  poverty 
and  consumption  ;  caused  the  blonde  to  drown  herself,  leaving 
her  clothes  on  the  bank  with  the  customary  note  pinned  to 
them  forgiving  the  Duke  and  hoping  he  would  be  happy  ;  re 
vealed  to  the  Duke,  by  means  of  the  usual  strawberry  mark 
on  left  arm,  that  he  had  married  his  own  long-lost  mother  and 
destroyed  his  long-lost  sister  ;  instituted  the  proper  and  neces 
sary  suicide  of  the  Duke  and  the  Duchess  in  order  to  compass 
poetical  justice;  opened  the  earth  and  let  the  Roscicrucian 
through,  accompanied  with  the  accustomed  smoke  and  thunder 
and  smell  of  brimstone,  and  finished  with  the  promise  that  in 
the  next  chapter,  after  holding  a  general  inquest,  he  would  take 
up  the  surviving  character  of  the  novel  and  tell  what  became 
of  the' devil ! 

It  read  with  singular  smoothness,  and  with  a  "dead" 
earnestness  that  was  funny  enough  to  suffocate  a  body. 
But  there  was  war  when  it  came  in.  The  other  novelists 
were  furious.  The  mild  stranger,  not  yet  more  than 
half  sober,  stood  there,  under  a  scathing  fire  of  vitupera 
tion,  meek  and  bewildered,  looking  from  one  to  another  of  his 
assailants,  and  wondering  what  he  could  have  done  to  invoke 

7  O 

such  a  storm.  When  a  lull  came  at  last,  he  said  his  say  gently 
and  appealingly — said  he  did  not  rightly  remember  what  he 
had  written,  but  was  sure  he  had  tried  to  do  the  best  he 
could,  and  knew  his  object  had  been  to  make  the  novel  not 
only  pleasant  and  plausible  but  instructive  and — 

The  bombardment  began  again.  The  novelists  assailed  his 
ill-chosen  adjectives  and  demolished  them  with  a  storm  of 
denunciation  and  ridicule.  And  so  the  siege  went  on.  Every 
time  the  stranger  tried  to  appease  the  enemy  he  only  made 
matters  worse.  Finally  he  offered  to  rewrite  the  chapter. 
This  arrested  hostilities.  The  indignation  gradually  quieted 
down,  peace  reigned  again  and  the  sufferer  retired  in  safety 
and  got  him  to  his  own  citadel. 


364:   THE  DISSOLUTE  AU'/HOR'S  SECOND  EFFORT. 

But  on  the  way  thither  the  evil  angel  tempted  him  and  he 
got  drunk  again.  And  again  his  imagination  went  mad.  He  led 
the  heroes  and  heroines  a  wilder  dance  than  ever ;  and  yet  all 
through  it  ran  that  same  convincing  air  of  honesty  and  earnest 
ness  that  had  marked  his  first  work.  He  got  the  characters 
into  the  most  extraordinary  situations,  put  them  through  the 
most  surprising  performances,  and  made  them  talk  the  strangest 
talk !  But  the  chapter  cannot  be  described.  It  was  symmet 
rically  crazy ;  it  was  artistically  absurd ;  and  it  had  explana 
tory  footnotes  that  were  fully  as  curious  as  the  text.  I  remember 
one  of  the  "  situations,"  and  will  offer  it  as  an  example  of  the 
whole.  He  altered  the  character  of  the  brilliant  lawyer,  and 
made  him  a  great-hearted,  splendid  fellow  ;  gave  him  fame  and 
riches,  and  set  his  age  at  thirty-three  years.  Then  he  made 
the  blonde  discover,  through  the  help  of  the  Roscicrucian  and 
the  melodramatic  miscreant,  that  while  the  Duke  loved  her 
money  ardently  and  wanted  it,  he  secretly  felt  a  sort  of  lean- 
ing  toward  the  society-young-lady.  Stung  to  the  quick,  she 
tore  her  affections  from  him  and  bestowed  them  with  tenfold 
power  upon  the  lawyer,  who  responded  with  consuming  zeal. 
But  the  parents  would  none  of  it.  "What  they  wanted  in  the 
family  was  a  Duke  ;  and  a  Duke  they  were  determined  to  have ; 
though  they  confessed  that  next  to  the  Duke  the  lawyer  had 
their  preference.  Necessarily  the  blonde  now  went  into  a  de 
cline.  The  parents  were  alarmed.  They  pleaded  with  her  to 
marry  the  Duke,  but  she  steadfastly  refused,  and  pined  on. 
Then  they  laid  a  plan.  They  told  her  to  wait  a  year  and  a 
day,  and  if  at  the  end  of  that  time  she  still  felt  that  she  could 
not  marry  the  Duke,  she  might  marry  the  lawyer  with  their 
full  consent.  The  result  "was  as  they  had  foreseen  :  gladness 
came  again,  and  the  flush  of  returning  health.  Then  the 
parents  took  the  next  step  in  their  scheme.  They  had  the 
family  physician  recommend  a  long  sea  voyage  and  much  land 
travel  for  the  thorough  restoration  of  the  blonde's  strength ; 
and  they  invited  the  Duke  to  be  of  the  party.  They  judged 
that  the  Duke's  constant  presence  and  the  lawyer's  protracted 
absence  would  do  the  rest — for  they  did  not  invite  the  lawyer. 

So  they  set  sail  in  a  steamer  for  America — and  the  third 


HEROES    AND    HEROINES    GENERALLY    MIXED.    365 

day  out,  when  their  sea-sickness  called  truce  and  permitted 
them  to  take  their  first  meal  at  the  public  table,  behold  there 
gat  the  lawyer!  The  Duke  and  party  made  the  best  of  an 


UNLOOKED-FOR  APPEARANCE  OF  THE  LAWYEB. 

awkward  situation ;  the  voyage  progressed,  and  the  vessel  neared 
America.  But,  by  and  by,  two  hundred  miles  off  New  Bed 
ford,  the  ship  took  fire ;  she  burned  to  the  water's  edge ;  of  all 
her  crew  and  passengers,  only  thirty  were  saved.  They  floated 
about  the  sea  half  an  afternoon  and  all  night  long.  Among 
them  were  our  friends.  The  lawyer,  by  superhuman  exertions, 
had  saved  the  blonde  and  her  parents,  swimming  back  and  forth 
two  hundred  yards  and  bringing  one  each  time — (the  girl  first). 
The  Duke  had  saved  himself.  In  the  morning  two  whale 
ships  arrived  on  the  scene  and  sent  their  boats.  The  weather 
was  stormy  and  the  embarkation  was  attended  with  much 
confusion  and  excitement.  The  lawyer  did  his  duty  like  a 
man ;  helped  his  exhausted  and  insensible  blonde,  her  parents 
and  some  others  into  a  boat  (the  Duke  helped  himself  in) ;  then 
a  child  fell  overboard  at  the  other  end  of  the  raft  and  the  law 
yer  rushed  thither  and  helped  half  a  dozen  people  fish  it  out, 
under  the  stimulus  of  its  mother's  screams.  Then  he  ran  back 
— a  few  seconds  too  late — the  blonde's  boat  was  under  way.  So 


366 


FAITHFUL  LOVERS  PARTED  AGAIN. 


lie  liad  to  take  the  other  boat,  and  go  to  the  other  ship.     The 
storm  increased  and  drove  the  vessels  out  of  sight  of  each  other 


THE  STORM    INCREASED. 

— drove  them  whither  it  would.  When  it  calmed,  at  the  end 
of  three  days,  the  blonde's  ship  was  seven  hundred  miles  north 
of  Boston  and  the  other  about  seven  hundred  south  of  that 
port.  The  blonde's  captain  was  bound  on  a  whaling  cruise 
in  the  North  Atlantic  and  could  not  go  back  such  a  distance 

O 

or  make  a  port  without  orders ;  such  being  nautical  law.  The 
lawyer's  captain  was  to  cruise  in  the  North  Pacific,  and  he 
could  not  go  back  or  make  a  port  without  orders.  All  the  law 
yer's  money  and  baggage  were  in  the  blonde's  boat  and  went 
to  the  blonde's  ship — so  his  captain  made  him  work  his  passage 
as  a  common  sailor.  "When  both  ships  had  been  cruising  nearly 
a  j  ear,  the  one  was  off  the  coast  of  Greenland  and  the  other  in 


A    LONG    FISH    STORY. 


367 


Behring's  Strait.  The  blonde  had  long  ago  been  well-nigh 
persuaded  that  her  lawyer  had  been  washed  overboard  and 
lost  just  before  the  whale  ships  reached  the  raft,  and  now, 
under  the  pleadings  of  her  parents  and  the  Duke  she  was  at 
last  beginning:  to  nerve  herself  for  the  doom  of  the  covenant, 


JONAH  OUTDONE. 


and  prepare  for  the  hated  marriage.  But  she  would  not  yield 
a  day  before  the  date  set.  The  weeks  dragged  on,  the 
time  narrowed,  orders  were  given  to  deck  the  ship  for  the 
wedding — a  wedding  at  sea  among  icebergs  and  walruses. 
Five  days  more  and  all  would  be  over.  So  the  blonde 
reflected,  with  a  sigh  and  a  tear.  Oh  where  was  her  true  love 
— and  why,  why  did  he  not  come  and  save  her?  At  that  mo 
ment  he  was  lifting  his  harpoon  to  strike  a  whale  in  Behring's 
Strait,  five  thousand  miles  away,  by  the  way  of  the  Arctic 
Ocean,  or  twenty  thousand  by  the  way  of  the  Horn — that  was 
the  reason.  He  struck,  but  not  with  perfect  aim — his  foot 
slipped  and  he  fell  in  the  whale's  mouth  and  went  down  his 


368  SAD    FATE    OF    THE    OCCIDENTAL. 

throat.  He  was  insensible  five  days.  Then  he  came  to  him 
self  and  heard  voices ;  daylight  was  streaming  through  a  hole 
cut  in  the  whale's  roof.  He  climbed  out  and  astonished  the 
sailors  who  were  hoisting  blubber  up  a  ship's  side.  He  rec 
ognized  the  vessel,  flew  aboard,  surprised  the  wedding  party 
at  the  altar  and  exclaimed : 

"  Stop  the  proceedings — I'm  here !  Come  to  my  arms,  my 
own ! " 

There  were  foot-notes  to  this  extravagant  piece  of  literature 
wherein  the  author  endeavored  to  show  that  the  whole  thing 
was  within  the  possibilities ;  he  said  he  got  the  incident  of  the 
whale  traveling  from  Behring's  Strait  to  the  coast  of  Green 
land,  five  thousand  miles  in  five  days,  through  the  Arctic  Ocean, 
from  Charles  Reade's  "  Love  Me  Little  Love  Me  Long,"  and 
considered  that  that  established  the  fact  that  the  thing  could 
be  done ;  and  he  instanced  Jonah's  adventure  as  proof  that  a 
man  could  live  in  a  whale's  belly,  and  added  that  if  a  preacher 
could  stand  it  three  days  a  lawyer  could  surely  stand  it  five  ! 

There  was  a  fiercer  storm  than  ever  in  the  editorial  sanctum 
now,  and  the  stranger  was  peremptorily  discharged,  and  his 
manuscript  flung  at  his  head.  But  he  had  already  delayed  things 
so  much  that  there  was  not  time  for  some  one  else  to  rewrite 
the  chapter,  and  so  the  paper  came  out  without  any  novel  in  it. 
It  was  but  a  feeble,  struggling,  stupid  journal,  and  the  absence 
of  the  novel  probably  shook  public  confidence;  at  any  rate, 
before  the  first  side  of  the  next  issue  went  to  press,  the  Weekly 
Occidental  died  as  peacefully  as  an  infant. 

An  effort  was  made  to  resurrect  it,  with  the  proposed  advan 
tage  of  a  telling  new  title,  and  Mr.  F.  said  that  TJie  Phenitt 
would  be  just  the  name  for  it,  because  it  would  give  the  idea 
of  a  resurrection  from  its  dead  ashes  in  a  new  and  undreamed 
of  condition  of  splendor ;  but  some  low-priced  smarty  on  one 
of  the  dailies  suggested  that  we  call  it  the  Lazarus  •  and  inas 
much  as  the  people  were  not  profound  in  Scriptural  matters 
but  thought  the  resurrected  Lazarus  and  the  dilapidated  men 
dicant  that  begged  in  the  rich  man's  gateway  were  one  and  the 
eame  person,  the  name  became  the  laughing  stock  of  the  town, 
and  killed  the  paper  for  good  and  all. 


MY    UNPRINTED    POEM.  369 

I  was  sorry  enough,  for  I  was  very  proud  of  being  con 
nected  with  a  literary  paper — prouder  than  I  have  ever  been 
of  anything  since,  perhaps.  I  had  written  some  rhymes  for  it — 
poetry  I  considered  it — and  it  was  a  great  grief  to  me  that  the 
production  was  on  the  "  first  side  "  of  the  issue  that  was  not 
completed,  and  hence  did  not  see  the  light.  But  time  brings 
its  revenges — I  can  put  it  in  here  ;  it  will  answer  in  place  of 
a  tear  dropped  to  the  memory  of  the  lost  Occidental.  The 
idea  (not  the  chief  idea,  but  the  vehicle  that  bears  it)  wTas 
probably  suggested  by  the  old  song  called  "  The  Raging 
Canal,"  but  I  cannot  remember  now.  I  do  remember,  though, 
that  at  that  time  I  thought  my  doggerel  was  one  of  the  ablest 
poems  of  the  age : 

THE   AGED  PILOT  MAN. 

On  the  Erie  Canal,  it  was, 

All  on  a  summer's  day, 
I  sailed  forth  with  my  parents 

Far  away  to  Albany. 

From  out  the  clouds  at  noon  that  day 

There  came  a  dreadful  storm, 
That  piled  the  billows  high  about, 

And  filled  us  with  alarm. 

A  man  came  rushing-  from  a  house, 
Saying,  "  Snub  up  *  your  boat  I  pray, 

Snub  up  your  boat,  snub  up,  alas, 
Snub  up  while  yet  you  may." 

Our  captain  cast  one  glance  astern, 

Then  forward  glanced  he, 
And  said,  "  My  wife  and  little  ones 

I  never  more  shall  see." 

Said  Dollinger  the  pilot  man, 
In  noble  words,  but  few, — 
"  Fear  not,  but  lean  on  Dollinger, 
And  he  will  fetch  you  through." 

*  The  customary  canal  technicality  for  "  tie  up." 


370  A    TERRIBLE    STORM. 

The  boat  drove  on,  the  frightened  mules 
Tore  through  the  rain  and  wind. 

And  bravely  still,  in  danger's  post, 
The  whip-boy  strode  behind. 

"  Come  'board,  come  'board,"  the  captain  cried, 
"  Nor  tempt  so  wild  a  storm ;  " 
But  still  the  raging  mules  advanced, 
Anc1  still  the  boy  strode  on. 

Then  said  the  captain  to  us  all, 

"  Alas,  'tis  plain  to  me, 
The  greater  danger  is  not  there, 

But  here  upon  the  sea. 

So  let  us  strive,  while  life  remains, 

To  save  all  souls  on  board, 
And  then  if  die  at  last  we  must, 

Let  ....  I  cannot  speak  the  word  I  ** 


DOLLINGER. 


Said  Dollinger  the  pilot  man, 
Tow'ring  above  the  crew. 


THE    GALE    INCREASES. 

*  Fear  not,  but  trust  in  Dollinger, 
And  be  will  fetcb  you  through." 

'  Low  bridge !  low  bridge  !  "  all  beads  went  down, 

Tbe  laboring  bark  sped  on  ; 
A  mill  we  passed,  we  passed  a  church, 

Hamlets,  and  fields  of  corn  ; 
And  all  the  world  came  out  to  see, 

And  chased  along  the  shore 


371 


"  LOW  BRIDGE. 


Crying,  "  Alas,  alas,  the  sheeted  rain, 
The  wind,  the  tempest's  roar  ! 

Alas,  the  gallant  ship  and  crew, 
Can  nothing  help  them  more  ?  " 

And  from  our  deck  sad  eyes  looked  out 

Across  the  stormy  scene  : 
The  tossing  wake  of  billows  aft, 

The  bending  forests  green. 


372 


SHORTENING    SAIL. 

The  chickens  sheltered  under  carts 

In  lee  of  barn  the  cows, 
The  skurrying  swine  with  straw  in  mouth, 

The  wild  spray  from  our  bows  ! 

"  She  balances ! 

She  wavers  1 
Now  let  her  go  about ! 

If  she  misses  stays  and  broaches  to, 
We're  ail " — [then  with  a  shout,] 
"Huray !  hurayl 
Avast!  belay! 
Take  in  more  sail ! 
Lord,  what  a  gale  ! 
Ho,  boy,  haul  taut  on  the  hind  mule's  tail ! " 


SHORTENING    SAIL. 


Ho !  lighten  ship !  ho !  man  the  pump  ! 
Ho,  hostler,  heave  the  lead ! 


THE    SHIPWRECK.  373 

"  A  quarter  three  ! — 'tis  shoaling  fast ! 
Three  feet  large  ! — t-h-r-e-e  feet ! — 
Three  feet  scant !  "  I  cried  in  fright 
"  Oil,  is  there  no  retreat  ?  " 

Said  Dollinger,  the  pilot  man, 

As  on  the  vessel  flew, 
"  Fear  not,  but  trust  in  Dollinger, 
And  he  will  fetch  you  through." 

A  panic  struck  the  bravest  hearts, 

The  boldest  cheek  turned  pale  ; 
For  plain  to  all,  this  shoaling  said 
A  leak  had  burst  the  ditch's  bed  ! 
And,  straight  as  bolt  from  crossbow  sped, 
Our  ship  swept  on,  with  shoaling  lead, 

Before  the  fearful  gale  1 

"  Sever  the  tow  line  !     Cripple  the  mules  !" 

Too  late  I There  comes  a  shock  ! 

****** 

Another  length,  and  the  fated  craft 

Would  have  swum  in  the  saving  lock  ! 

Then  gathered  together  the  shipwrecked  crew 

And  took  one  last  embrace, 
While  sorrowful  tears  from  despairing  eyea 

Ran  down  each  hopeless  face  ; 
And  some  did  think  of  their  little  ones 

Whom  they  never  more  might  see, 
And  others  of  waiting  wives  at  home. 

And  mothers  that  grieved  would  be. 

But  of  all  the  children  of  misery  there 

On  that  poor  sinking  frame, 
But  one  spake  words  of  hope  and  faith, 

And  I  worshipped  as  they  came : 
Said  Dollinger  the  pilot  man, — 

(0  brave  heart,,  strong  and  true !) — 
"  Fear  not,  but  trust  in  Dollinger, 

For  he  will  fetch  you  through." 

Lo !  scarce  the  words  have  passed  his  lips 

The  dauntless  prophet  say'th, 
When  every  soul  about  him  seeth 

A  wonder  crown  his  faith  t 


874 


LIGHTENING    SHIP. 


And  count  ye  all,  both  great  and  small, 
As  numbered  with  the  deadi 

For  mariner  for  forty  year, 
On  Erie,  boy  and  man, 

I  never  yet  saw  such  a  storm, 
Or  one  't  with  it  began  ! " 

So  overboard  a  keg  of  nails 

And  anvils  three  we  threw, 
Likewise  four  bales-of  gunny-sacks, 

Two  hundred  pounds  of  glue, 
Two  sacks  of  corn,  four  ditto  wheat, 

A  box  of  books,  a  cow, 
A  violin,  Lord  Byron's  works, 

A  rip-saw  and  a  sow. 


LIGHTENING    SHIP. 


A  curve !  a  curve !  the  dangers  grow ! 
"  Labbord  ! — stabbord  ! — s-t-e-a-d-y ! — so  !- 
Hard-&-poTt,  Dol ! — hellum-a-lee ! 

Haw  the  head  mule ! — the  aft  one  gee ! 
Luff! — bring  her  to  the  wind !  " 


THE    RESCUE. 

For  straight  a  farmer  brought  a  plank,- 

(Mysteriously  inspired) — 
And  laying  it  unto  the  ship, 

In  silent  awe  retired. 


375 


THE  MARVELOUS   RESCUE. 


Then  every  sufferer  stood  amazed 

That  pilot  man  before ; 
A  moment  stood.    Then  wondering  turned, 

And  speechless  walked  ashore. 


CHAPTEE   L1I. 

SINCE  I  desire,  in  this  chapter,  to  say  an  instructive  word 
or  two  about  the  silver  mines,  the  reader  may  take  this 
fair  warning  and  skip,  if  he  chooses.  The  year  1863  was  per 
haps  the  very  top  blossom  and  culmination  of  the  "  flush  times." 
Virginia  swarmed  with  men  and  vehicles  to  that  degree  that 
the  place  looked  like  a  very  hive — that  is  when  one's  vision 
could  pierce  through  the  thick  fog  of  alkali  dust  that  was  gen 
erally  blowing  in  summer.  I  will  say,  concerning  this  dust, 
that  if  you  drove  ten  miles  through  it,  you  and  your  horses 
would  be  coated  with  it  a  sixteenth  of  an  inch  thick  and  pre 
sent  an  outside  appearance  that  was  a  uniform  pale  yellow 
color,  and  your  buggy  would  have  three  inches  of  dust  in  it, 
thrown  there  by  the  wheels.  The  delicate  scales  used  by  the 
assayers  were  inclosed  in  glass  cases  intended  to  be  air-tight, 
and  }*et  some  of  this  dust  was  so  impalpable  and  so  invisibly  fine 
that  it  would  get  in,  somehow,  and  impair  the  accuracy  of 
those  scales. 

Speculation  ran  riot,  and  yet  there  was  a  world  of  substan 
tial  business  going  on,  too.  All  freights  were  brought  over 
the  mountains  from  California  (150  miles)  by  pack-train  partly, 
and  partly  in  huge  wagons  drawn  by  such  long  mule  teams 
that  each  team  amounted  to  a  procession,  and  it  did  seem, 
sometimes,  that  the  grand  combined  procession  of  animals 
stretched  unbroken  from  Yirginia  to  California.  Its  long 
route  was  traceable  clear  across  the  deserts  of  the  Territory  by 
the  writhing  serpent  of  dust  it  lifted  up.  By  these  wagons, 


SHIPPING    SILVER    BRICKS.  377 

freights  over  that  hundred  and  fifty  miles  were  $200  a  ton  for 
small  lots  (same  price  for  all  express  matter  brought  by  stage), 
and  $100  a  ton  for  full  loads.  One  Virginia  firm  received  one 
hundred  tons  of  freight  a  month,  and  paid  $10,000  a  month 
freightage.  In  the  winter  the  freights  were  much  higher.  All 
the  bullion  was  shipped  in  bars  by  stage  to  San  Francisco  (a 
bar  was  usually  about  twice  the  size  of  a  pig  of  lead  and  con 
tained  from  $1,500  to  $3,000  according  to  the  amount  of  gold 
mixed  with  the  silver),  and  the  freight  on  it  (when  the  ship 
ment  was  large)  was  one  and  a  quarter  per  cent,  of  its  intrinsic 
value.  So,  the  freight 
on  these  bars  probably 
averaged  something 
more  than  $25  each. 
Small  shippers  paid 
two  per  cent.  There 
were  three  stages  a 
day,  each  way,  and  I 
have  seen  the  out-go-  SILVER  BRICK8. 

ing  stages  carry  away  a 

third  of  a  ton  of  bullion  each,  and  more  than  once  I  saw  them 
divide  a  two-ton  lot  and  take  it  off.  However,  these  were  ex 
traordinary  events.*  Two  tons  of  silver  bullion  would  be  in 

*Mr.  Valentine,  Wells  Fargo's  agent,  has  handled  all  the  bullion  shipped 
through  the  Virginia  office  for  many  a  month.  To  his  memory — which  ia 
excellent — we  are  indebted  for  the  following  exhibit  of  the  company's  busi 
ness  in  the  Virginia  office  since  the  first  of  January,  1862 :  From  January 
1st  to  April  1st,  about  $270,000  worth  of  bullion  passed  through  that  office ; 
during  the  next  quarter,  $570,000;  next  quarter,  $800,000;  next  quarter, 
$950,000;  next  quarter,  $1,275,000;  and  for  the  quarter  ending  on  the  30th 
of  last  June,  about  $1,600,000.  Thus  in  a  year  and  a  half,  the  Virginia  office 
only  shipped  $5,330,000  in  bullion.  During  the  year  1862  they  shipped 
$2,615,000,  so  we  perceive  the  average  shipments  have  more  than  doubled 
in  the  last  six  months.  This  gives  us  room  to  promise  for  the  Virginia 
office  $500,000  a  month  for  the  year  1863  (though  perhaps,  judging  by  the 
steady  increase  in  the  business,  we  are  under  estimating,  somewhat).  This 
gives  us  $6,000,000  for  the  year.  Gold  Hill  and  Silver  City  together  can 
beat  us— we  will  give  them  $10,000,000.  To  Dayton,  Empire  City,  Ophir 
and  Carson  City,  we  will  allow  an  aggregate  of  $8,000,000,  which  is  not  over 


378  IMMENSE    TIMBER    SUPPORTS. 

the  neighborhood  of  forty  bars,  and  the  freight  on  it  over  $1,000. 
Each  coach  always  carried  a  deal  of  ordinary  express  matter 
beside,  and  also  from  fifteen  to  twenty  passengers  at  from  $25 
to  $30  a  head.  "With  six  stages  going  all  the  time,  Wells, 
Fargo  and  Co.'s  Virginia  City  business  was  important  and 
lucrative. 

All  along  under  the  centre  of  Virginia  and  Gold  Hill,  for  a 
couple  of  miles,  ran  the  great  Comstock  silver  lode — a  vein  of 
ore  from  fifty  to  eighty  feet  thick  between  its  solid  walls  of 
rock — a  vein  as  wide  as  some  of  New  York's  streets.  I  will 
remind  the  reader  that  in  Pennsylvania  a  coal  vein  only  eight 
feet  wide  is  considered  ample. 

Virginia  was  a  busy  city  of  streets  and  houses  above  ground. 
Under  it  was  another  busy  city,  down  in  the  bowels  of  the 
earth,  where  a  great  population  of  men  thronged  in  and  out 
among  an  intricate  maze  of  tunnels  and  drifts,  flitting  hither 
and  thither  under  a  winking  sparkle  of  lights,  and  over  their 
heads  towered  a  vast  web  of  interlocking  timbers  that  held  the 
walls  of  the  gutted  Comstock  apart.  These  timbers  were  as 
large  as  a  man's  body,  and  the  framework  stretched  upward  so 
far  that  no  eye  could  pierce  to  its  top  through  the  closing  gloom. 
It  was  like  peering  up  through  the  clean-picked  ribs  and  bones 
of  some  colossal  skeleton.  Imagine  such  a  framework  two 
miles  long,  sixty  feet  wide,  and  higher  than  any  church  spire  in 
America.  Imagine  this  stately  lattice-work  stretching  down 
Broadway,  from  the  St.  Nicholas  to  "Wall  street,  and  a  Fourth 


the  mark,  perhaps,  and  may  possibly  be  a  little  under  it.  To  Esmeralda  we 
give  $4,000,000.  To  Reese  River  and  Humboldt  $2,000,000,  which  is  liberal 
now,  but  may  not  be  before  the  year  is  out.  So  we  prognosticate  that  the 
yield  of  bullion  this  year  will  be  about  $30,000,000.  Placing  the  number  of 
mills  in  the  Territory  at  one  hundred,  this  gives  to  each  the  labor  of  pro 
ducing  $300,000  in  bullion  during  the  twelve  months.  Allowing  them  to 
run  three  hundred  days  in  the  year  (which  none  of  them  more  than  do),  this 
makes  their  work  average  $1,000  a  day.  Say  the  mills  average  twenty  tons 
ef  rock  a  day  and  this  rock  worth  $50  as  a  general  thing,  and  you  have  the 
actual  work  of  our  one  hundred  mills  figured  down  "  to  a  spot  " — $1,000  a 
day  each,  and  $30,000,000  a  year  in  the  aggregate. — Enterprise. 
[A  considerable  over  estimate. — M.  T.J 


UNDERGROUND    POPULATION. 


379 


of  July  procession,  reduced  to  pigmies,  parading  on  top  of  it 
and  flaunting  their  flags,  high  above  the  pinnacle  of  Trinity 
steeple.  One  can  imagine  that,  but  he  cannot  well  imagine 
what  that  forest  of  timbers 
cost,  from  the  time  they 
were  felled  in  the  pineries 
beyond  "Washoe  Lake, 
hauled  up  and  around 
Mount  Davidson  at  atro 
cious  rates  of  freightage, 
then  squared,  let  down  in 
to  the  deep  maw  of  the 
mine  and  built  up  there. 
Twenty  ample  fortunes 
would  not  timber  one  of 
the  greatest  of  those  silver 
mines.  The  Spanish  pro 
verb  says  it  requires  a  gold 
mine  to  "  run  "  a  silver  one, 
and  it  is  true.  A  beggar 
with  a  silver  mine  is  a  piti 
able  pauper  indeed  if  he 
cannot  sell. 

I  spoke  of  the  underground  Yirginia  as  a  city.  The  Gotfld 
and  Curry  is  only  one  single  mine  under  there,  among  a  great 
many  others ;  yet  the  Gould  and  Curry's  streets  of  dismal  drifts 
and  tunnels  were  five  miles  in  extent,  altogether,  and  its  pop 
ulation  five  hundred  miners.  Taken  as  a  whole,  the  under 
ground  city  had  some  thirty  miles  of  streets  and  a  population 
of  five  or  six  thousand.  In  this  present  day  some  of  those 
populations  are  at  work  from  twelve  to  sixteen  hundred  feet 
under  Yirginia  and  Gold  Hill,  and  the  signal-bells  that  tell 
them  what  the  superintendent  above  ground  desires  them  to 
do  are  struck  by  telegraph  as  we  strike  a  fire  alarm.  Some 
times  men  fall  down  a  shaft,  there,  a  thousand  feet  deep.  In 
such  cases,  the  usual  plan  is  to  hold  an  inquest. 

If  you  wish  to  visit  one  of  those  mines,  you  may  walk 


TIMBER    SUPPORTS. 


3SO 


VISITING    THE    MINES. 


GALLERY  TO  GALLERY. 


through  a  tunnel  about  hall  a  mile 
long  if  you  prefer  it,  or  you  may 
take  the  quicker  plan  of  shooting 
like  a  dart  down  a  shaft,  on  a 
small  platform.  It  is  like  tumbling 
down  through  an  empty  steeple,  feet 
first.  When  you  reach  the  bottom, 
you  take  a  candle  and  tramp  through 
drifts  and  tunnels  where  throngs  of 
men  are  digging  and  blasting ;  you 
watch  them  send  up  tubs  full  of  great 
lumps  of  stone — silver  ore ;  you  select 
choice  specimens  from  the  mass,  aa 
souvenirs  ;  you  admire  the  world  of 
skeleton  timbering ;  you  reflect  fre 
quently  that  you  are  buried  under  a 
mountain,  a  thousand  feet  below  day 
light  ;  being  in  the  bottom  of  the 
mine  you  climb  from  "  gallery "  to 
"gallery,"  up  endless  ladders  that 
stand  straight  up  and  dowrn ;  when 
your  legs  fail  you  at  last,  you  lie 
down  in  a  small  box-car  in  a  cramped 
"  incline  "  like  a  half-up-ended  sewer 
and  are  dragged  up  to  daylight  feel- 
as  if  you  are  crawling  through  a  coffin 
that  has  no  end  to  it.  Arrived  at  the 
top,  you  find  a  busy  crowd  of  men 
receiving  the  ascending  cars  and  tubs 
and  dumping  the  ore  from  an  eleva 
tion  into  long  rowrs  of  bins  capable  of 
holding  half  a  dozen  tons  each ;  un 
der  the  bins  are  rows  of  wragons  load 
ing  from  chutes  and  trap-doors  in  the 
bins,  and  down  the  long  street  is  a 
procession  of  these  wagons  wending 
toward  the  silver  mills  with  their 


THE    CAVED    MINES.  381 

rich  freight.  It  is  all  "  done,"  now,  and  there  you  are.  You 
need  never  go  down  again,  for  you  have  seen  it  all.  If  you 
have  forgotten  the  process  of  reducing  the  ore  in  the  mill  and 
making  the  silver  bars,  you  can  go  back  and  find  it  again  in 
my  Esmeralda  chapters  if  so  disposed. 

Of  course  these  mines  cave  in,  in  places,  occasionally,  and 
then  it  is  worth  one's  while  to  take  the  risk  of  descending  into 
them  and  observing  the  crushing  power  exerted  by  the  pressing 
weight  of  a  settling  mountain.  I  published  such  an  experience 
in  the  Enterprise,  once,  and  from  it  I  will  take  an  extract : 

AN  HOUR  IN  THE  CAVED  MINES. — We  journeyed  down  into  the  Ophir 
mine,  yesterday,  to  see  the  earthquake.  We  could  not  go  down  the  deep 
incline,  because  it  still  has  a  propensity  to  cave  in  places.  Therefore  we 
traveled  through  the  long  tunnel  which  enters  the  hill  above  the  Ophir 
office,  and  then  by  means  of  a  series  of  long  ladders,  climbed  away  down 
from  the  first  to  the  fourth  gallery.  Traversing  a  drift,  we  came  to  the 
Spanish  line,  passed  five  sets  of  timbers  still  uninj  ured,  and  found  the  earth 
quake.  Here  was  as  complete  a  chaos  as  ever  was  seen — vast  masses  of  earth 
and  splintered  and  broken  timbers  piled  confusedly  together,  with  scarcely 
an  aperture  left  large  enough  for  a  cat  to  creep  through.  Rubbish  was  still 
falling  at  intervals  from  above,  and  one  timber  which  had  braced  others  ear 
lier  in  the  day,  was  now  crushed  down  out  of  its  former  position,  showing 
that  the  caving  and  settling  of  the  tremendous  mass  was  still  going  on.  We 
were  in  that  portion  of  the  Ophir  known  as  the  "north  mines."  Returning 
to  the  surface,  we  entered  a  tunnel  leading  into  the  Central,  for  the  pur 
pose  of  getting  into  the  main  Ophir.  Descending  a  long  incline  in  this 
tunnel,  we  traversed  a  drift  or  so,  and  then  went  down  a  deep  shaft  from 
whence  we  proceeded  into  the  fifth  gallery  of  the  Ophir.  From  a  side-drift 
we  crawled  through  a  small  hole  and  got  into  the  midst  of  the  earthquake 
again — earth  and  broken  timbers  mingled  together  without  regard  to  grace 
or  symmetry.  A  large  portion  of  the  second,  third  and  fourth  galleries 
had  caved  in  and  gone  to  destruction — the  two  latter  at  seven  o'clock  on  the 
previous  evening. 

At  the  turn-table,  near  the  northern  extremity  of  the  fifth  gallery,  two 
big  piles  of  rubbish  had  forced  their  way  through  from  the  fifth  gallery, 
and  from  the  looks  of  the  timbers,  more  was  about  to  come.  These  beams 
are  solid — eighteen  inches  square ;  first,  a  great  beam  is  laid  on  the  floor, 
then  upright  ones,  five  feet  high,  stand  on  it,  supporting  another  horizontal 
beam,  and  so  on,  square  above  square,  like  the  framework  of  a  window.  The 
superincumbent  weight  was  sufficient  to  mash  the  ends  of  those  great  up 
right  beams  fairly  into  the  solid  wood  of  the  horizontal  ones  three  inches, 
compressing  and  bending  the  upright  beam  till  it  curved  like  a  bow.  Before 
the  Spanish  caved  in,  some  of  their  twelve-inch  horizontal  timbers  were  com- 


382          TERRIBLE    APPEARANCE    OF    THE    RUINS. 

pressed  in  this  way  until  they  were  only  five  inches  thick !  Imagine  the 
power  it  must  take  to  squeeze  a  solid  log  tog-ether  in  that  way.  Here,  also, 
was  a  range  of  timbers,  for  a  distance  of  twenty  feet,  tilted  six  inches  out 
of  the  perpendicular  by  the  weight  resting  upon  them  from  the  caved  gal 
leries  above.  You  could  hear  things  cracking  and  giving  way,  and  it  was 
not  pleasant  to  know  that  the  world  overhead  was  slowly  and  silently  sink 
ing  down  upon  you.  The  men  down  in  the  mine  do  not  mind  it,  however. 

Returning  along  the  fifth  gallery,  we  struck  the  safe  part  of  the  Ophir 
incline,  and  went  down  it  to  the  sixth  ;  but  we  found  ten  inches  of  water 
there,  and  had  to  come  back.  In  repairing  the  damage  done  to  the  incline, 
the  pump  had  to  be  stopped  for  two  hours,  and  in  the  meantime  the  water 
gained  about  a  foot.  However,  the  pump  was  at  work  again,  and  the  flood- 
water  was  decreasing.  We  climbed  up  to  the  fifth  gallery  again  and  sought 
a  deep  shaft,  whereby  we  might  descend  to  another  part  of  the  sixth,  out  of 
reach  of  the  water,  but  suffered  disappointment,  as  the  men  had  gone  to  din 
ner,  and  there  was  no  one  to  man  the  windlass.  So,  having  seen  the  earth 
quake,  we  climbed  out  at  the  Union  incline  and  tunnel,  and  adjourned,  all 
dripping  with  candle  grease  and  perspiration,  to  lunch  at  the  Ophir  office. 

During  the  great  flush  year  of  1S63,  Nevada  [claims  to 
have]  produced  $25,000,000  in  bullion — almost,  if  not  quite,  a 
round  million  to  each  thousand  inhabitants,  which  is  very 
well,  considering  that  she  was  without  agriculture  and  manu 
factures.*  Silver  mining  was  her  sole  productive  industry. 

*  Since  the  above  was  in  type,  I  learn  from  an  official  source  that  the 
above  figure  is  too  high,  and  that  the  yield  for  1863  did  not  exceed  $20,000,000. 
However,  the  day  for  large  figures  is  approaching  ;  the  Sutro  Tunnel  is  to 
plow  through  the  Comstock  lode  from  end  to  end,  at  a  depth  of  two  thousand 
feet,  and  then  mining  will  be  easy  and  comparatively  inexpensive  ;  and  the 
momentous  matters  of  drainage,  and  hoisting  and  hauling  of  ore  will  cease 
to  be  burdensome.  This  vast  work  will  absorb  many  years,  and  millions  of 
dollars,  in  its  completion  ;  but  it  will  early  yield  money,  for  that  desirable 
epoch  will  begin  as  soon  as  it  strikes  the  first  end  of  the  vein.  The  tunnel 
will  be  some  eight  miles  long,  and  will  develop  astonishing  riches.  Cars 
will  carry  the  ore  through  the  tunnel  and  dump  it  in  the  mills  and  thus  do 
away  with  the  present  costly  system  of  double  handling  and  transportation 
by  mule  teams.  The  water  from  the  tunnel  will  furnish  the  motive  power 
for  the  mills.  Mr.  Sutro,  the  originator  of  this  prodigious  enterprise,  is  one 
of  the  few  men  in  the  world  who  is  gifted  with  the  pluck  and  perseverance 
necessary  to  follow  up  and  hound  such  an  undertaking  to  its  completion. 
He  has  converted  several  obstinate  Congresses  to  a  deserved  friendliness  to 
ward  his  important  work,  and  has  gone  up  and  down  and  to  and  fro  in  Europe 
until  he  has  enlisted  a  great  moneyed  interest  in  it  there. 


CHAPTER   LIII. 

VERY  now  and  then,  in  these  days,  the  boys  used  to  tell 
me  I  ought  to  get  one  Jim  Elaine  to  tell  me  the  stir 
ring  story  of  his  grandfather's  old  ram — but  they  always  added 
that  I  must  not  mention  the  matter  unless  Jim  was  drunk  at 
the  time — just  comfortably  and  sociably  drunk.  They  kept 
this  up  until  my  curiosity  was  on  the  rack  to  hear  the  story.  I 
got  to  haunting  Elaine  ;  but  it  was  of  no  use,  the  boys  always 
found  fault  with  his  condition ;  he  was  often  moderately  but 
never  satisfactorily  drunk.  I  never  watched  a  man's  condition 
wfth  such  absorbing  interest,  such  anxious  solicitude ;  I  never 
eo  pined  to  see  a  man  uncompromisingly  drunk  before.  At 
last,  one  evening  I  hurried  to  his  cabin,  for  I  learned  that  this 
time  his  situation  was  such  that  even  the  most  fastidious  could 
find  no  fault  with  it — he  was  tranquilly,  serenely,  symmetri 
cally  drunk — not  a  hiccup  to  mar  his  voice,  not  a  cloud  upon 
his  brain  thick  enough  to  obscure  his  memory.  As  I  entered, 
he  w^as  sitting  upon  an  empty  powder-keg,  with  a  clay  pipe  in 
one  hand  and  the  other  raised  to  command  silence.  His  face 
was  round,  red,  and  very  serious ;  his  throat  was  bare  and  his 
hair  tumbled ;  in  general  appearance  and  costume  he  was  a 
stalwart  miner  of  the  period.  On  the  pine  table  stood  a 
candle,  and  its  dim  light  revealed  "the  boys"  sitting  here  and 
there  on  bunks,  candle-boxes,  powder-kegs,  etc.  They  said  : 
"  Sh — !  Don't  speak — he's  going  to  commence." 

THE    STORY   OF   THE   OLD    RAM. 

I  found  a  seat  at  once,  and  Elaine  said  : 

"  I  don't  reckon  them  times  will  ever  come  again.     There 


384 


GRANDFATHER'S    OLD    RAM. 


never  was  a  more  bullier  old  ram  than  what  he  was.     Grand 
father  fetched  him  from  Illinois — got  him  of  a  man  by  the 

name  of  Yates 
—Bill  Yates— 
maybe  yon 
might  have 
heard  of  him  ; 
his  father  was  a 
deacon  —  B  a  p  - 
tist — and  he  was 
a  rustler,  too ;  a 
man  had  to  get 
up  ruther  early 
to  get  the  start 
of  old  Thankful 
Yates ;  it  was 
him  that  put  the 
Greens  tip  to 
jining  teams 
with  my  grand 
father  when  he 
moved  west.  Seth  Green  was  prob'ly  the  pick  of  the  flock ; 
he  married  a  Wilkerson — Sarah  "Wilkerson — good  cretur,  she 
was — one  of  the  likeliest  heifers  that  was  ever  raised  in  old 
Stoddard,  everybody  said  that  knowed  her.  She  could  heft  a 
bar'l  of  flour  as  easy  as  I  can  flirt  a  flapjack.  And  spin  I 
Don't  mention  it !  Independent  ?  Humph  !  "When  Sile 
Hawkins  come  r  browsing  around  her,  she  let  him  know  that 
for  all  his  tin  he  couldn't  trot  in  harness  alongside  of  her. 
You  see,  Sile  Hawkins  was — no,  it  wrarn't  Sile  Hawkins,  after 
all — it  was  a  galoot  by  the  name  of  Filkins — I  disremember 
his  first  name  ;  but  he  was  a  stump — come  into  pra'r  meeting 
drunk,  one  night,  hooraying  for  Nixon,  becuz  he  thought  it 
was  a  primary  ;  and  old  deacon  Ferguson  up  and  scooted  him 
through  the  window  and  he  lit  on  old  Miss  Jefferson's  head, 
poor  old  filly.  She  was  a  good  soul — had  a  glass  eye  and  used 
to  lend  it  to  old  Miss  Wagner,  that  hadn't  any,  to  receive 


JIM  ELAINE. 


MISS    WAGNER'S    GLASS    EYE. 


385 


company  in ;  it  warn't  big  enough,  and  when  Miss  Wagner 
warn't  noticing,  it  would  get  twisted  around  in  the  socket,  and 


HURRAH  FOR  NIXON. 


look  up,  maybe,  or  out  to  one  side,  and  every  which  way, 
while  t'  other  one  was  looking  as  straight  ahead  as  a  spy-glass. 
Grown  people  didn't  mind  it,  but  it  most  always  made  the 
children  cry,  it  was  so  sort  of  scary.  She  tried  packing  it  in  raw 
cotton,  but  it  wouldn't  work,  somehow — the  cotton  would  get 
loose  and  stick  out  and  look  so  kind  of  awful  that  the  children 
couldn't  stand  it  no  way.  She  was  always  dropping  it  out,  and 
turning  up  her  old  dead-light  on  the  company  empty,  and 
making  them  oncomfortable,  becuz  she  never  could  tell  when 
it  hopped  out,  being  blind  on  that  side,  you  see.  So  some 
body  would  have  to  hunch  her  and  say,  "  Your  game  eye  has 
fetched  loose,  Miss  Wagner  dear" — and  then  all  of  them 
would  have  to  sit  and  wait  till  she  jammed  it  in  again — wrong 
side  before,  as  a  general  thing,  and  green  as  a  bird's  egg,  being 
a  bashful  cretur  and  easy  sot  back  before  company.  But 


386 


IN    THE    COFFIN    BUSINESS. 


MISS  WAGNEB. 


being  wrong  side   before   warn't   much  difference,  anyway, 
becuz  her  own  eye  was  sky-blue  and  the  glass  one  was  yaller 

on  the  front  side,  so  which 
ever  way  she  turned  it  it 
didn't  match  nohow.  Old 
Miss  Wagner  was  consid 
erable  on  the  borrow,  she 
was.  When  she  had  a 
quilting,  or  Dorcas  S'iety  at 
her  house  she  gen' ally  bor 
rowed  Miss  Higgins's  wood 
en  leg  to  stump  around  on  ; 
it  was  considerable  shorter 
than  her  other  pin,  but 
much  she  minded  that.  She 
said  she  couldn't  abide 
crutches  when  she  had  company,  becuz  they  were  so  slow ; 
said  when  she  had  company  and  things  had  to  be  done,  she 
wanted  to  get  up  and  hump  herself.  She  was  as  bald  as 
a  jug,  and  so  she  used  to  borrow  Miss  Jacops's  wig — Miss 
Jacops  was  the  coffin-peddler's  wife — a  ratty  old  buzzard,  he 
was,  that  used  to  go  roosting  around  where  people  was  sick, 
waiting  for  'em  ;  and  there  that  old  rip  would  sit  all  day,  in 
the  shade,  on  a  coffin  that  he  judged  would  fit  the  can'idate  ; 
and  if  it  was  a  slow  customer  and  kind  of  uncertain,  he'd 
fetch  his  rations  and  a  blanket  along  and  sleep  in  the  coffin 
nights.  He  was  anchored  out  that  way,  in  frosty  weather,  for 
about  three  weeks,  once,  before  old  Robbins's  place,  waiting 
for  him  ;  and  after  that,  for  as  much  as  two  years,  Jacops  was 
not  on  speaking  terms  with  the  old  man,  on  account  of  his 
disapp'inting  him.  He  got  one  of  his  feet  froze,  and  lost 
money,  too,  becuz  old  Bobbins  took  a  favorable  turn  and  got 
well.  The  next  time  Bobbins  got  sick,  Jacops  tried  to  make 
up  with  him,  and  varnished  up  the  same  old  coffin  and  fetched 
it  along ;  but  old  Bobbins  was  too  many  for  him  ;  he  had  him 
in,  and  'peared  to  be  powerful  weak  ;  he  bought  the  coffin  for 
ten  dollars  and  Jacops  was  to  pay  it  back  and  twenty-five  more 


OLD     ROBBINS    COLLECTS    DAMAGES. 


387 


besides  if  Bobbins  didn't  like  the  coffin  after  he'd  tried  it. 
And  then  Robbins  died,  and  at  the  funeral  lie  bursted  off  the 


WAITING  FOR  A  CUSTOMER. 


lid  and  riz  up  in  his  shroud  and  told  the  parson  to  let  up  on 
the  performances,  becuz  he  could  not  stand  such  a  coffin  as 
that.  You  see  he  had  been  in  a  trance  once  before,  when  he 
was  young,  and  he  took  the  chances  on  another,  cal'lating  that 
if  he  made  the  trip  it  was  money  in  his  pocket,  and  if  he 
missed  fire  he  couldn't  lose  a  cent.  And  by  George  he  sued 
Jacops  for  the  rhino  and  got  jedgment ;  and  he  set  up  the 
coffin  in  his  back  parlor  and  said  he  'lowed  to  take  his  time, 
now.  It  was  always  an  aggravation  to  Jacops,  the  way  that 
miserable  old  thing  acted.  He  moved  back  to  Indiany  pretty 
soon — went  to  Wellsville — Wellsville  was  the  place  the  Hog- 
adorns  was  from.  Mighty  fine  family.  Old  Maryland  stock. 
Old  Squire  Hogadorn  could  carry  around  more  mixed  licker, 
and  cuss  better  than  most  any  man  I  ever  see.  His  second 
wife  was  the  widder  Billings — she  that  was  Becky  Martin ; 
her  dam  was  deacon  Dunlap's  first  wife.  Her  oldest  child, 
Maria,  married  a  missionary  and  died  in  grace — et  up  by  the 


388 


EVERYTHING    DOES    GOOD.' 


savages.  They  et  him,  too,  poor  feller — biled  him.  It  warn't 
the  custom,  so  they  say,  but  they  explained  to  friends  of  his'n 
that  went  down  there  to  bring  away  his  things,  that  they'd 
tried  missionaries  every  other  way  and  never  could  get  any 
good  out  of  'em — and  so  it  annoyed  all  his  relations  to  find 
out  that  that  man's  life  was  fooled  away  just  out  of  a  dern'd 
experiment,  so  to  speak.  But  mind  you,  there  ain't  anything 
ever  reely  lost ;  everything  that  people  can't  understand  and 
don't  see  the  reason  of  does  good  if  you  only  hold  on  and  give 
it  a  fair  shake ;  Pro v'dence  don't  fire  no  _  blanket tridges,  boys. 
That  there  missionary's  substance,  unbeknowns  to  himself, 
actu'ly  converted  every  last  one  of  them  heathens  that  took  a 
chance  at  the  barbacue.  Nothing  ever  fetched  them  but  that. 
Don't  tell  me  it  was  an  accident  that  he  was  biled.  There 

ain't  no  such  a  thing  as  an 
accident.  When  my  uncle 
Lem  was  leaning  up  agin 
a  scaffolding  once,  sick,  or 
drunk,  or  suthin,  an  Irish 
man  with  a  hod  full  of 
bricks  fell  on  him  out  of 
the  third  story  and  broke 
the  old  man's  back  in  two 
places.  People  said  it  was 
an  accident.  Much  acci 
dent  there  was  about  that. 
He  didn't  know  what  he 
was  there  for,  but  he  was 
there  for  a  good  object.  If 
he  hadn't  been  there  the 
Irishman  would  have  been 
killed.  Nobody  can  ever 
make  me  believe  anything 

WAS  TO  BE  THERE.  TT       1 

different  from  that.    Uncle 

Lem's  dog  was  there.  Why  didn't  the  Irishman  fall  on  the 
dog  ?  Becuz  the  dog  would  a  seen  him  a  coming  and  stood  from 
under.  That's  the  reason  the  dog  warn't  appinted.  A  dog 


A    MODEL    WIDOW. 


389 


can't  be  depended  on  to  carry  out  a  special  providence.     Mark 

my  words  it  was  a  put-up  thing.     Accidents  don't  happen, 

boys.     Uncle  Lem'^jlQgrr-X^wish  you  could  a  seen  that  dog. 

lie  was  a  reglar  shepherd  —  or  ruther  he  was 

part  bull  and  part  shepherd  —  splendid  ani 

mal  ;  belonged  to  parson  Ilagar  before  Uncle 

Lem  got  him.     Parson  Ilagar  belonged  to 

the  Western  Reserve  Hagars  ;  prime  family  ; 

his  mother  was  a  "Watson  ;  one  of  his  sisters 

married  a  Wlieeler  ;  they  settled  in  Morgan 

county,  and  he  got  nipped  by  the  machinery 

in  a  carpet  factory  and  went  through  in  less 

than   a   quarter  of  a  minute  ;  his  widder 

bought  the  piece  of  carpet   that  had  his 

remains  wove  in,  and  people  come  a  hundred 

mile  to  'tend  the  funeral.     There  was  four 

teen  yards  in  the  piece.     She  wouldn't  let 

them  roll  him  up,  but  planted  him  just  so 

—  full  length.     The  church   was  middling 
small  where  they  preached  the  funeral,  and 
they  had  to  let  one  end  of  the  coffin  stick  ^^ 
out  of  the  window.     They  didn't  bury  him 

—  they  planted  one  end,  and  let  him  stand 
up,  same  as  a  monument.     And  they  nailed 
a  sign  on  it  and  put  —  put  on  —  put  on  it  — 
sacred    to  —  the    m-e-m-o-r-y  —  of    fourteen 
y-a-r-d-s  —  of     three-ply  —  car  ---  pet  —  con-  jj 
taining  all  that  was  —  m-o-r-t-a-l  —  of  —  of  — 


MONUMENT. 


Jim  Elaine  had  been  growing  gradually 
drowsy  and  drowsier  —  his  head  nodded, 
once,  twice,  three  times  —  dropped  peacefully  upon  his  breast, 
and  he  fell  tranquilly  asleep.  The  tears  were  running  down 
the  boys'  cheeks  —  they  were  suffocating  with  suppressed  laugh 
ter  —  and  had  been  from  the  start,  though  I  had  never  noticed 
it.  I  perceived  that  I  was  "sold."  I  learned  then  that  Jim 
Elaine's  peculiarity  was  that  whenever  he  reached  a  certain 


390 


THE    JOKE    OUT. 


stage  of  intoxication,  no  human  power  could  keep  him  from 
setting  out,  with  impressive  unction,  to  tell  about  a  wonderful 
adventure  which  he  had  once  had  with  his  grandfather's  old 
ram — and  the  mention  of  the  ram  in  the  first  sentence  was  as 
far  as  any  man  had  ever  heard  him  get,  concerning  it.  He 
always  maundered  off,  interminably,  from  one  thing  to  another, 
till  his  whisky  got  the  best  of  him  and  he  fell  asleep.  "What 
the  thing  was  that  happened  to  him  and  his  grandfather's  old 
ram  is  a  dark  mystery  to  this  day,  for  nobody  has  ever  yet 
found  out. 


OHAPTEE    LIT. 

OF  course  there  was  a  large  Chinese  population  in  Virginia 
— it  is  the  case  with  every  town  and  city  on  the  Pacific 
coast.  They  are  a  harmless  race  when  white  men  either  let 
them  alone  or  treat  them  no  worse  than  dogs ;  in  fact  they  are 
almost  entirely  harmless  anyhow,  for  they  seldom  think  of  re 
senting  the  vilest  insults  or  the  cruelest  injuries.  They  are 
quiet,  peaceable,  tractable,  free  from  drunkenness,  and  they 
are  as  industrious  as  the  day  is  long.  A  disorderly  Chinaman 
is  rare,  and  a  lazy  one  does  not  exist.  So  long  as  a  Chinaman 
has  strength  to  use  his  hands  he  needs  no  support  from  any 
body  ;  white  men  often  complain  of  want  of  work,  but  a  China 
man  offers  no  such  complaint;  he  always  manages  to  find 
something  to  do.  He  is  a  great  convenience  to  everybody — 
even  to  the  worst  class  of  white  men,  for  he  bears  the  most  of 
their  sins,  suffering  fines  for  their  petty  thefts,  imprisonment 
for  their  robberies,  and  death  for  their  murders.  Any  white 
man  can  swear  a  Chinaman's  life  away  in  the  courts,  but  no 
Chinaman  can  testify  against  a  white  man.  Oars  is  the  "  land 
of  the  free" — nobody  denies  that — nobody  challenges  it. 
[Maybe  it  is  because  we  won't  let  other  people  testify.]  As  I 
write,  news  comes  that  in  broad  daylight  in  San  Francisco, 
some  boys  have  stoned  an  inoffensive  Chinaman  to  death,  and 
that  although  a  large  crowd  witnessed  the  shameful  deed,  no 
one  interfered. 

There  are  seventy  thousand  (and   possibly   one  hundred 
thousand)  Chinamen  on  the  Pacific  coast.     There  were  about 


392  CHINESE    IN    VIRGINIA    CITY. 

a  thousand  in  Virginia.  They  were  penned  into  a  "  Chinese 
quarter  " — a  thing  which  they  do  not  particularly  object  to,  as 
they  are  fond  of  herding  together.  Their  buildings  were  of 
wood ;  usually  only  one  story  high,  and  set  thickly  together 
along  streets  scarcely  wide  enough  for  a  wagon  to  pass  through. 
Their  quarter  was  a  little  removed  from  the  rest  of  the  town. 
The  chief  employment  of  Chinamen  in  towns  is  to  wash 
clothing.  They  always  send  a  bill,  like  this  below,  pinned  to 
the  clothes.  It  is  mere  ceremony,  for  it  does  not  enlighten 
the  customer  much.  Their  price  for  washing 
\  i  was  $2.50  per  dozen — rather  cheaper  than  white 

i~^fe  people  could  afford  to  wash  for  at  that  time.     A 

^-  very  common  sign  on  the  Chinese  houses  was  • 

^  Y  "  See  Yup,  Washer  and  Ironer  "  ;  "  Hong  Wo, 
y  II  Washer";  "Sam  Sing  &  Ah  Hop,  Washing." 
T  The  house  servants,  cooks,  etc.,  in  California  and 
Nevada,  were  chiefly  Chinamen.  There  were 
few  white  servants  and  no  Chinawomen  so  em 
ployed.  Chinamen  make  good  house  servants, 
being  quick,  obedient,  patient,  quick  to  learn 
and  tirelessly  industrious.  They  do  not  need  to 
be  taught  a  thing  twice,  as  a  general  thing.  They 
are  imitative.  If  a  Chinaman  were  to  see  his 
master  break  up  a  centre  table,  in  a  passion,  and 
kindle  a  fire  with  it,  that  Chinaman  would  be 
likely  to  resort  to  the  furniture  for  fuel  forever 
afterward. 

All  Chinamen  can  read,  write  and  cipher 
writh  easy  facility — pity  but  all  our  petted  voters 
could.  In  California  they  rent  little  patches 
of  ground  and  do  a  deal  of  gardening.  They 
will  raise  surprising  crops  of  vegetables  on  a 
sand  pile.  They  waste  nothing.  What  is  rub 
bish  to  a  Christian,  a  Chinaman  carefully  preserves  and  makes 
useful  in  one  way  or  another.  He  gathers  up  all  the  old  oyster 
and  sardine  cans  that  white  people  throw  away,  and  pro 
cures  marketable  tin  and  solder  from  them  by  melting. 


CHINESE    AT    HOME. 


393 


IMITATION. 


He  gathers  up  old  bones  and  turns  them  into  manure. 
In  California  he  gets  a  living  out  of  old  mining  claims 
that  white  men  have 
abandoned  as  ex 
hausted  and  worth 
less — and  then  the 
officers  come  down 
on  him  once  a  month 
with  an  exorbitant 
swindle  to  which  the 
legislature  has  given 
the  broad,  general 
name  of  "  foreign  " 
mining  tax,  but  it  is 
usually  inflicted  on 
no  foreigners  but 
Chinamen.  This 
swindle  has  in  some 
cases  been  repeated 

once  or  twice  on  the  same  victim  in  the  course  of  the  same 
month — but  the  public  treasury  was  not  additionally  enriched 
by  it,  probably. 

Chinamen  hold  their  dead  in  great  reverence — they  worship 
their  departed  ancestors,  in  fact.  Hence,  in  China,  a  man's  front 
yard,  back  yard,  or  any  other  part  of  his  premises,  is  made  his 
family  burying  ground,  in  order  that  he  may  visit  the  graves 
at  any  and  all  times.  Therefore  that  huge  empire  is  one 
mighty  cemetery ;  it  is  ridged  and  wringled  from  its  centre  to 
its  circumference  with  graves — and  inasmuch  as  every  foot  of 
ground  must  be  made  to  do  its  utmost,  in  China,  lest  the  swarm 
ing  population  suffer  for  food,  the  very  graves  are  cultivated 
and  yield  a  harvest,  custom  holding  this  to  be  no  dishonor  to 
the  dead.  Since  the  departed  are  held  in  such  worshipful 
reverence,  a  Chinaman  cannot  bear  that  any  indignity  be 
offered  the  places  where  they  sleep.  Mr.  Burlingame  said  that 
herein  lay  China's  bitter  opposition  to  railroads ;  a  road 
could  not  be  built  anywhere  in  the  empire  without  disturbing 
the  graves  of  their  ancestors  or  friends. 


394  CHINESE    IMMIGRATION. 

A  Chinaman  hardly  believes  he  could  enjoy  the  hereafter 
except  his  body  lay  in  his  beloved  China ;  also,  he  desires  to 
receive,  himself,  after  death,  that  worship  with  which  he  has 
honored  his  dead  that  preceded  him.  Therefore,  if  he  visits  a 
foreign  country,  he  makes  arrangements  to  have  his  bones  re 
turned  to  China  in  case  he  dies ;  if  he  hires  to  go  to  a  foreign 
country  on  a  labor  contract,  there  is  always  a  stipulation  that 
his  body  shall  be  taken  back  to  China  if  he  dies ;  if  the  govern 
ment  sells  a  gang  of  Coolies  to  a  foreigner  for  the  usual  five- 
year  term,  it  is  specified  in  the  contract  that  their  bodies  shall 
be  restored  to  China  in  case  of  death.  On  the  Pacific  coast 
the  Chinamen  all  belong  to  one  or  another  of  several  great 
companies  or  organizations,  and  these  companies  keep  track  of 
their  members,  register  their  names,  and  ship  their  bodies  home 
when  they  die.  The  See  Yup  Company  is  held  to  be  the 
largest  of  these.  The  Ning  Yeong  Company  is  next,  and 
numbers  eighteen  thousand  members  on  the  coast.  Its  head 
quarters  are  at  San  Francisco,  where  it  has  a  costly  temple, 
several  great  officers  (one  of  whom  keeps  regal  state  in  seclu 
sion  and  cannot  be  approached  by  common  humanity),  and  a 
numerous  priesthood.  In  it  I  was  shown  a  register  of  its  mem 
bers,  writh  the  dead  and  the  date  of  their  shipment  to  China 
duly  marked.  Every  ship  that  sails  from  San  Francisco  carries 
away  a  heavy  freight  of  Chinese  corpses — or  did,  at  least,  until 
the  legislature,  with  an  ingenious  refinement  of  Christian 
cruelty,  forbade  the  shipments,  as  a  neat  underhanded  way  of 
deterring  Chinese  immigration.  The  bill  was  offered,  whether 
it  passed  or  not.  It  is  my  impression  that  it  passed.  There 
was  another  bill — it  became  a  law — compelling  every  incoming 
Chinaman  to  be  vaccinated  on  the  wharf  and  pay  a  duly  ap 
pointed  quack  (no  decent  doctor  would  defile  himself  with 
such  legalized  robbery)  ten  dollars  for  it.  As  few  importers 
of  Chinese  would  want  to  go  to  an  expense  like  that,  the  law 
makers  thought  this  would  be  another  heavy  blow  to  Chinese 
immigration. 

What  the  Chinese  quarter  of  Virginia  was  like — or,  indeed, 
what  the  Chinese  quarter  of  any  Pacific  coast  town  was  and  is 


A    VISIT    TO    CHINATOWN.  395 

like — may  be  gathered  from  tins  item  which  I  printed  in  the 
Enterprise  while  reporting  for  that  paper : 

CHINATOWN. — Accompanied  by  a  fellow  reporter,  we  made  a  trip  through 
our  Chinese  quarter  the  other  night.  The  Chinese  have  built  their  portion 
ot  the  city  to  suit  themselves  ;  and  as  they  keep  neither  carriages  nor 
wagons,  their  streets  are  not  wide  enough,  as  a  general  thing,  to  admit  of 
the  passage  of  vehicles.  At  ten  o'clock  at  night  the  Chinaman  may  be  seen 
in  all  his  glory.  In  every  little  cooped-up,  dingy  cavern  of  a  hut,  faint  with 
the  odor  of  burning  Josh-lights  and  with  nothing  to  see  the  gloom  by  save 
the  sickly,  guttering  tallow  candle,  were  two  or  three  yellow,  long-tailed 
vagabonds,  coiled  up  on  a  sort  of  short  truckle-bed,  smoking  opium,  motion 
less  and  with  their  lustreless  eyes  turned  inward  from  excess  of  satisfaction 
—or  rather  the  recent  smoker  looks  thus,  immediately  after  having  passed 
the  pipe  to  his  neighbor — for  opium-smoking  is  a  comfortless  operation,  and 
requires  constant  attention.  A  lamp  sits  on  the  bed,  the  length  of  the  long 
pipe-stem  from  the  smoker's  mouth ;  he  puts  a  pellet  of  opium  on  the  end  of 
a  wire,  sets  it  on  fire,  and  plasters  it  into  the  pipe  much  as  a  Christian  would 
fill  a  hole  with  putty  ;  then  he  applies  the  bowl  to  the  lamp  and  proceeds  to 
smoke — and  the  stewing  and  frying  of  the  drug  and  the  gurgling  of  the 
juices  in  the  stem  would  wellnigh  turn  the  stomach  of  a  statue.  John 
likes  it,  though  ;  it  soothes  him,  he  takes  about  two  dozen  whiffs,  and  then 
rolls  over  to  dream,  Heaven  only  knows  what,  for  we  could  not  imagine  by 
looking  at  the  soggy  creature.  Possibly  in  his  visions  he  travels  far  away 
from  the  gross  world  and  his  regular  washing,  and  feasts  on  succulent  rats 
and  birds'-nests  in  Paradise. 

Mr.  Ah  Sing  keeps  a  general  grocery  and  provision  store  at  No.  13  Wang 
street.  He  lavished  his  hospitality  upon  our  party  in  the  friendliest  way. 
He  had  various  kinds  of  colored  and  colorless  wines  and  brandies,  with  un- 
pronouncable  names,  imported  from  China  in  little  crockery  jugs,  and  which 
he  offered  to  us  in  dainty  little  miniature  wash-basins  of  porcelain.  He 
offered  us  a  mess  of  birds'-nests ;  also,  small,  neat  sausages,  of  which  we 
could  have  swallowed  several  yards  if  we  had  chosen  to  try,  but  we  sus 
pected  that  each  link  contained  the  corpse  of  a  mouse,  and  therefore 
refrained.  Mr.  Sing  had  in  his  store  a  thousand  articles  of  merchandise, 
curious  to  behold,  impossible  to  imagine  the  uses  of,  and  beyond  our  ability 
to  describe. 

His  ducks,  however,  and  his  eggs,  we  could  understand ;  the  former  were 
split  open  and  flattened  out  like  codfish,  and  came  from  China  in  that 
shape,  and  the  latter  were  plastered  over  with  some  kind  of  paste  which 
kept  them  fresh  and  palatable  through  the  long  voyage. 

We  found  Mr.  Hong  Wo,  No.  37  Chow-chow  street,  making  up  a  lottery 
Echeme — in  fact  we  found  a  dozen  others  occupied  in  the  same  way  in  vari 
ous  parts  of  the  quarter,  for  about  every  third  Chinaman  runs  a  lottery,  and 
the  balance  of  the  tribe  "  buck  "  at  it.  "  Tom,"  who  speaks  faultless  English, 
and  used  to  be  chief  and  only  cook  to  the  Territorial  Enterprise,  when  the 


396 


SPECIMEN    BUSINESS    MEN. 


establishment  kept  bachelor's  hall  two  years  ago,  said  that  "Sometime 
Chinaman  buy  ticket  one  dollar  hap,  ketch  urn  two  tree  hundred,  sometime 
no  ketch  um  anyting ;  lottery  like  one  man  fight  um  seventy — may-be  he 
whip,  may-be  he  get  whip  heself,  welly  good."  However,  the  percentage 
being  sixty-nine  against  him,  the  chances  are,  as  a  general  thing,  that  "  ho 


CHINESE  LOTTERY. 

get  whip  heself."  We  could  not  see  that  these  lotteries  differed  in  any 
respect  from  our  own,  save  that  the  figures  being  Chinese,  no  ignorant  white 
man  might  ever  hope  to  succeed  in  telling  "  t'other  from  which  ; "  the  man 
ner  of  drawing  is  similar  to  ours. 

Mr.  See  Yup  keeps  a  fancy  store  on  Live  Fox  street.  He  sold  us  fans  of 
white  feathers,  gorgeously  ornamented ;  perfumery  that  smelled  like  Lim- 
burger  cheese,  Chinese  pens,  and  watch-charms  made  of  a  stone  unscratch- 
able  with  steel  instruments,  yet  polished  and  tinted  like  the  inner  coat  of  a 
sea-shell.*  As  tokens  of  his  esteem,  See  Yup  presented  the  party  with 
gaudy  plumes  made  of  gold  tinsel  and  trimmed  with  peacocks'  feathers. 

We  ate  chow-chow  with  chop-sticks  in  the  celestial  restaurants  ;  our  com 
rade  chided  the  moon-eyed  damsels  in  front  of  the  houses  for  their  want  of  fem 
inine  reserve  ;  we  received  protecting  Josh-lights  from  our  hosts  and  "  dick- 


*A  peculiar  species  of  the  "jade-stone" — to  a  Chinaman  peculiarly 
precious. 


ABUSE    OF    THE    CHINESE. 


397 


ered  "  for  a  pagan  God  or  two.  Finally,  we  were  impressed  with  the  genius 
of  a  Chinese  book-keeper ;  he  figured  up  his  accounts  on  a  machine  like  a  grid 
iron  with  buttons  strung  on  its  bars  ;  the  different  rows  represented  units, 
tens,  hundreds  and  thousands.  He  fingered  them  with  incredible  rapidity — 
in  fact,  he  pushed  them  from  place  to  place  as  fast  as  a  musical  professor's 
fingers  travel  over  the  keys  of  a  piano. 

They  are  a  kindly  disposed,  well-meaning  race,  and  are 
respected  and  well  treated  by  the  upper  classes,  all  over  the 
Pacific  coast.  No  Californian  gentleman  or  lady  ever  abuses 
or  oppresses  a  Chinaman,  under  any  circumstances,  an  explana 
tion  that  seems  to  be  much  needed  in  the  East.  Only  the  scum 
of  the  population  do  it — they  and  their  children  ;  they,  and, 
naturally  and  consistently,  the  policemen  and  politicians,  like 
wise,  for  these  are  the  dust-licking  pimps  and  slaves  of  the 
scum,  there  as  well  as  elsewhere  in  America. 


CHAPTER     LV. 

I  BEGAN"  to  get  tired  of  staying  in  one  place  so  long. 
There  was  no  longer  satisfying  variety  in  going  down  to 
Carson  to  report  the  proceedings  of  the  legislature  once  a  year, 
and  horse-races  and  pumpkin-shows  once  in  three  months ; 
(they  had  got  to  raising  pumpkins  and  potatoes  in  "Washoe 
Valley,  and  of  course  one  of  the  first  achievements  of  the 
legislature  was  to  institute  a  ten-thousand-dollar  Agricultural 
Fair  to  show  off  forty  dollars'  worth  of  those  pumpkins  in — 
however,  the  territorial  legislature  was  usually  spoken  of  as 
the  "  asylum  ").  I  wanted  to  see  San  Francisco.  I  wanted  to 
go  somewhere.  I  wanted — I  did  not  know  what  I  wanted.  I 
had  the  "spring  fever"  and  wanted  a  change,  principally,  no 
doubt.  Besides,  a  convention  had  framed  a  State  Constitu 
tion  ;  nine  men  out  of  every  ten  wanted  an  office  ;  I  believed 
that  these  gentlemen  would  "treat"  the  moneyless  and  the 
irresponsible  among  the  population  into  adopting  the  consti 
tution  and  thus  wellnigh  killing  the  country  (it  could  not 
well  carry  such  a  load  as  a  State  government,  since  it  had 
nothing  to  tax  that  could  stand  a  tax,  for  undeveloped  mines 
could  not,  and  there  were  not  fifty  developed  ones  in  the  land, 
there  was  but  little  realty  to  tax,  and  it  did  seem  as  if  nobody 
was  ever  going  to  think  of  the  simple  salvation  of  inflicting  a 
money  penalty  on  murder).  I  believed  that  a  State  government 
would  destroy  the  "  flush  times,"  and  I  wanted  to  get  away.  I 
believed  that  the  mining  stocks  I  had  on  hand  would  soon  be 
worth  $100,000,  and  thought  if  they  reached  that  before  the 
Constitution  was  adopted,  I  would  sell  out  and  make  myself 


AN    OLD    SCHOOLMATE. 


399 


secure  from  the  crash  the  change  of  government  was  going  to 
bring.  I  considered  $100,000  sufficient  to  go  home  with 
decently,  though  it  was  but  a  small  amount  compared  to  what 
I  had  been  expecting  to  return  with.  I  felt  rather  down 
hearted  about  it,  but  I  tried  to  comfort  myself  with  the  re 
flection  that  with  such  a  sum  I  could  not  fall  into  want. 
About  this  time  a  schoolmate  of  mine  whom  I  had  not  seen 
since  boyhood,  came  tramping  in  on  foot  from  Reese  River,  a 
very  allegory  of  Poverty.  The  son  of  wealthy  parents,  here 
he  was,  in  a  strange  land,  hungry,  bootless,  mantled  in  an 
ancient  horse-blanket,  roofed 
with  a  brimless  hat,  and  so 
generally  and  so  extrava 
gantly  dilapidated  that  he 
could  have  "  taken  the  shine 
out  of  the  Prodigal  Son 
himself,"  as  he  pleasantly 
remarked.  He  wanted  to 
borrow  forty-six  dollars — 
twenty-six  to  take  him  to 
San  Francisco,  and  twenty 
for  something  else ;  to  buy 
some  soap  with,  maybe,  for 
he  needed  it.  I  found  I  had 
but  little  more  than  the 
amount  wanted,  in  my  pock 
et ;  so  I  stepped  in  and  bor 
rowed  forty-six  dollars  of  a 
banker  (on  twenty  days'  time, 


without  the  formality  of  a 
note),  and  gave  it  him,  rather 
than  walk  half  a  block  to  the 
office,  where  I  had  some  specie  laid  up.  If  anybody  had  told 
me  that  it  would  take  me  two  years  to  pay  back  that  forty-six 
dollars  to  the  banker  (for  I  did  not  expect  it  of  the  Prodigal, 
and  was  not  disappointed),  I  would  have  felt  injured.  And 
so  would  the  banker. 


AN  OLD  FRIEND. 


4:00  IN    THE    EDITORIAL    CHAIR. 

I  wanted  a  change.  I  wanted  variety  of  some  kind.  It 
came.  Mr.  Goodman  went  away  for  a  week  and  left  me  the 
post  of  chief  editor.  It  destroyed  me.  The  first  day,  I  wrote 
my  "leader"  in  the  forenoon.  The  second  day,  I  had  no 
subject  and  put  it  off  till  the  afternoon.  The  third  day  I  put 
it  off  till  evening,  and  then  copied  an  elaborate  editorial  out 
of  the  "American  Cyclopedia,"  that  steadfast  friend  of  the 
editor,  all  over  this  land.  The  fourth  day  I  "fooled  around" 
till  midnight,  and  then  fell  back  on  the  Cyclopedia  again. 
The  fifth  day  I  cudgeled  my  brain  till  midnight,  and  then 
kept  the  press  waiting  while  I  penned  some  bitter  personalities 
on  six  different  people.  The  sixth  day  I  labored  in  anguish 
till  far  into  the  night  and  brought  forth — nothing.  The  paper 
went  to  press  without  an  editorial.  The  seventh  day  I  re 
signed.  On  the  eighth,  Mr.  Goodman  returned  and  found 
six  duels  on  his  hands — my  personalities  had  borne  fruit. 

Nobody,  except  he  has  tried  it,  knows  what  it  is  to  be  an 
editor.'  It  is  easy  to  scribble  local  rubbish,  with  the  facts  all 
before  you ;  it  is  easy  to  clip  selections  from  other  papers  ;  it 
is  easy  to  string  out  a  correspondence  from  any  locality ;  but 
it  is  unspeakable  hardship  to  write  editorials.  Subjects  are  the 
trouble — the  dreary  lack  of  them,  I  mean.  Every  day,  it  is 
drag,  drag,  drag — think,  and  worry  and  suffer — all  the  world 
is  a  dull  blank,  and  yet  the  editorial  columns  must  be  filled. 
Only  give  the  editor  a  subject,  and  his  work  is  done — it  is  no 
trouble  to  wTrite  it  up  ;  but  fancy  how  you  would  feel  if  you 
had  to  pump  your  brains  dry  every  day  in  the  week,  fifty-two 
weeks  in  the  year.  It  makes  one  low  spirited  simply  to  think 
of  it.  The  matter  that  each  editor  of  a  daily  paper  in  America 
writes  in  the  course  of  a  year  would  fill  from  four  to  eight 
bulky  volumes  like  this  book  !  Fancy  what  a  library  an  editor's 
work  would  make,  after  twenty  or  thirty  years'  service.  Yet 
people  often  marvel  that  Dickens,  Scott,  Bulwer,  Dumas,  etc., 
have  been  able  to  produce  so  many  books.  If  these  authors 
had  wrought  as  voluminously  as  newspaper  editors  do,  the 
result  would  be  something  to  marvel  at,  indeed.  How  editors 
can  continue  this  tremendous  labor,  this  exhausting  con  sump- 


ALMOST    AN    AGREEABLE    OFFER.  401 

tion  of  brain  fibre  (for  their  work  is  creative,  and  not  a  mere 
mechanical  laying-up  of  facts,  like  reporting),  day  after  day 
and  year  after  year,  is  incomprehensible.  Preachers  take  two 
months'  holiday  in  midsummer,  for  they  find  that  to  produce  two 
sermons  a  week  is  wearing,  in  the  long  run.  In  truth  it  must 
be  so,  and  is  so  ;  and  therefore,  how  an  editor  can  take  from 
ten  to  twenty  texts  and  build  upon  them  from  ten  to  twenty 
painstaking  editorials  a  week  and  keep  it  up  all  the  year  round, 
is  farther  beyond  comprehension  than  ever.  Ever  since  I 
survived  my  week  as  editor,  I  have  found  at  least  one  pleasure 
in  any  newspaper  that  comes  to  my  hand ;  it  is  in  admiring 
the  long  columns  of  editorial,  and  wondering  to  myself  how 
in  the  mischief  he  did  it ! 

Mr.  Goodman's  return  relieved  me  of  employment,  unless 
I  chose  to  become  a  reporter  again.  I  could  not  do  that ;  I 
could  not  serve  in  the  ranks  after  being  General  of  the  army. 
So  I  thought  I  would  depart  and  go  abroad  into  the  world 
somewhere.  Just  at  this  juncture,  Daii,  my  associate  in  the 
reportorial  department,  told  me,  casually,  that  two  citizens  had 
been  trying  to  persuade  him  to  go  with  them  to  New  York 
and  aid  in  selling  a  rich  silver  mine  wrhich  they  had  discovered 
and  secured  in  a  new  mining  district  in  our  neighborhood.  He 
said  they  offered  to  pay  his  expenses  and  give  him  one  third 
of  the  proceeds  of  the  sale.  He  had  refused  to  go.  It  was 
the  very  opportunity  I  wanted.  I  abused  him  for  keeping  so 
quiet  about  it,  and  not  mentioning  it  sooner.  He  said  it  had 
not  occurred  to  him  that  I  would  like  to  go,  and  so  he  had 
recommended  them  to  apply  to  Marshall,  the  reporter  of  the 
other  paper.  I  asked  Dan  if  it  was  a  good,  honest  mine,  and 
no  swindle.  He  said  the  men  had  shown  him  nine  tons  of  the 
rock,  which  they  had  got  out  to  take  to  New  York,  and  he 
could  cheerfully  say  that  he  had  seen  but  little  rock  in  Nevada 
that  was  richer ;  and  moreover,  he  said  that  they  had  secured 
a  tract  of  valuable  timber  and  a  mill-site,  near  the  mine.  My 
first  idea  was  to  kill  Dan.  But  I  changed  my  mind,  notwith 
standing  I  was  so  angry,  for  I  thought  maybe  the  chance  was 
not  yet  lost.  Dan  said  it  was  by  no  means  lost ;  that  the  men 
26f 


402  DEPARTURE    FROM    VIRGINIA    CITY. 

were  absent  at  the  mine  again,  and  would  not  be  in  Virginia 
to  leave  for  the  East  for  some  ten  days ;  that  they  had  re 
quested  him  to  do  the  talking  to  Marshall,  and  he  had  promised 
that  he  would  either  secure  Marshall  or  somebody  else  for 
them  by  the  time  they  got  back ;  he  would  now  say  nothing 
to  anybody  till  they  returned,  and  then  fulfil  his  promise,  by 
furnishing  me  to  them. 

It  was  splendid.  I  went  to  bed  all  on  fire  with  excite 
ment  ;  for  nobody  had  yet  gone  East  to  sell  a  Nevada  silver 
mine,  and  the  field  was  white  for  the  sickle.  I  felt  that  such 
a  mine  as  the  one  described  by  Dan  would  bring  a  princely 
sum  in  New  York,  and  sell  without  delay  or  difficulty.  I 
could  not  sleep,  my  fancy  so  rioted  through  its  castles  in  the 
air.  It  was  the  "  blind  lead  "  come  again. 

Next  day  I  got  away,  on  -the  coach,  with  the  usual  eclat 
attending  departures  of  old  citizens, — for  if  you  have  only  half 
a  dozen  friends  out  there  they  will  make  noise  for  a  hundred 
rather  than  let  you  seem  to  go  away  neglected  and  unregretted 
— and  Dan  promised  to  keep  strict  watch  for  the  men  that  had 
the  mine  to  sell. 

The  trip  was  signalized  but  by  one  little  incident,  and  that 
occurred  just  as  we  were  about  to  start.  A  very  seedy  looking 
vagabond  passenger  got  out  of  the  stage  a  moment  to  wait 
till  the  usual  ballast  of  silver  bricks  was  thrown  in.  He  was 
standing  on  the  pavement,  when  an  awkward  express  employe, 
carrying  a  brick  weighing  a  hundred  pounds,  stumbled  and 
let  it  fall  on  the  bummer's  foot.  He  instantly  dropped  on  the 
ground  and  began  to  howl  in  the  most  heart-breaking  way.  A 
sympathizing  crowd  gathered  around  and  were  going  to  pull 
his  boot  off;  but  he  screamed  louder  than  ever  and  they 
desisted ;  then  he  fell  to  gasping,  and  between  the  gasps  ejacu 
lated  "  Brandy !  for  Heaven's  sake,  brandy  ! "  They  poured 
half  a  pint  down  him,  and  it  wonderfully  restored  and  com 
forted  him.  Then  he  begged  the  people  to  assist  him  to  the 
stage,  which  was  done.  The  express  people  urged  him  to 
have  a  doctor  at  their  expense,  but  he  declined,  and  said  that 
if  he  only  had  a  little  brandy  to  take  along  with  him,  to  soothe 


ONE    LITTLE    INCIDENT. 


403 


his  paroxyms  of  pain  when  they  came  on,  he  would  be  grate 
ful  and  content.  He  was  quickly  supplied  with  two  bottles, 
and  we  drove  off.  He  was  so  smiling  and  happy  after  that, 
that  I  could  not  refrain  from  asking  him  how  he  could  possibly 
be  so  comfortable 
with  a  crushed  foot. 

"Well,"  said  he, 
"I  hadn't  had  a 
drink  for  twelve 
hours,  and  hadn't  a 
cent  to  my  name.  I 
was  most  perishing 
— and  so,  when  that 
duffer  dropped  that 
hundred-pounder  on 
my  foot,  I  see  my 
chance.  Got  a  cork 
leg,  you  know !"  and 
he  pulled  up  his  pan 
taloons  and  proved 
it. 

He  was  as  drunk 
as  a  lord  all  day  long, 
and  full  of  chuck- 
lings  over  his  timely 
ingenuity. 

One  drunken 
man  necessarily  re 
minds  one  of  an 
other.  I  once  heard  a  gentleman  tell  about  an  incident  which 
he  witnessed  in  a  Californian  bar-room.  He  entitled  it  "  Ye 
Modest  Man  Taketh  a  Drink."  It  was  nothing  but  a  bit  of 
acting,  but  it  seemed  to  me  a  perfect  rendering,  and  worthy  of 
Toodles  himself.  The  modest  man,  tolerably  far  gone  with  beer 
and  other  matters,  enters  a  saloon  (twenty-five  cents  is  the  price 
for  anything  and  everything,  and  specie  the  only  money  used) 
and  lays  down  a  half  dollar;  calls  for  whiskey  and  drinks  it; 


FAREWELL  ANI>  ACCIDENT. 


404: 


ANOTHER    ANECDOTE. 


the  bar-keeper  makes  change  and  lays  the  quarter  in  a  wet 
place  on  the  counter ;  the  modest  man  fumbles  at  it  with 
nerveless  fingers,  but  it  slips  and  the  water  holds  it ;  he  contem 
plates  it,  and  tries  again  ;  same  result ;  observes  that  people 
are  interested  in  what  he  is  at,  blushes  ;  fumbles  at  the  quarter 
again — blushes — puts  his  forefinger  carefully,  slowly  down,  to 
make  sure  of  his  aim — pushes  the  coin  toward  the  bar-keeper, 
and  says  with  a  sigh  : 

"  ('ic  !)     Gimme  a  cigar !  " 

Naturally,  another  gentleman  present  told  about  another 
drunken  man.     He  said  he  reeled  toward  home  late  at  night ; 

made    a    mistake  and  en 
tered     the     wrong    gate ; 
thought  he  saw  a  dog  on 
the  stoop  ;  and  it  was — an 
iron  one.    He  stopped  and 
considered  ;   wondered   if 
it  was  a   dangerous  dog ; 
ventured  to  say  "Be  (hie) 
begone  ! "  No  effect.  Then 
he      approached       warily? 
and  adopted  conciliation ; 
pursed    up  his  lips   and   tried   to 
whistle,  but  failed  ;  still  approached, 
saying,  "  Poor  dog !— doggy,  doggy, 
doggy  ! — poor  doggy-dog !  "      Got 
up  on  the  stoop,  still  petting  with 
fond  names ;  till  master  of  the  ad 
vantages  ;  then  exclaimed,  "  Leave, 
you  thief!" — planted  a  vindictive 
kick  in  his  ribs,  and  went  head-over- 
A  pause ;  a  sigh  or  two  of  pain, 


"GIMME  A  CIGAR! 


heels  overboard,  of  course. 

and  then  a  remark  in  a  reflective  voice : 

"Awful  solid  dog.  What  could  he  ben  eating?  ('ic !) 
Rocks,  p'raps.  Such  animals  is  dangerous.  'At's  what  /  say 
— they're  dangerous.  If  a  man — ('ic!) — if  a  man  wants  to 
feed  a  dog  on  rocks,  let  him  feed  him  on  rocks ;  'at's  all  right ; 


AN    INCIDENT    OF    MOUNT    DAVIDSON.  405 

but  let  him  keep  him  at  home — not  have  him  layin'  round  pro 
miscuous,  where  ('ic !)  where  people's  liable  to  stumble  over 
hi  in  when  they  ain't  noticin' ! " 

It  was  not  without  regret  that  I  took  a  last  look  at  the  tiny- 
flag  (it  was  thirty-five  feet  long  and  ten  feet  wide)  fluttering 
like  a  lady's  handkerchief  from  the  topmost  peak  of  Mount 
Davidson,  two  thousand  feet  above  Virginia's  roofs,  and  felt 
that  doubtless  I  was  bidding  a  permanent  farewell  to  a  city 
which  had  afforded  me  the  most  vigorous  enjoyment  of  life  I 
had  ever  experienced.  And  this  reminds  me  of  an  incident 
which  the  dullest  memory  Virginia  could  boast  at  the  time  it 
happened  must  vividly  recall,  at  times,  till  its  possessor  dies. 
Late  one  summer  afternoon  we  had  a  rain  shower.  That  was 
astonishing  enough,  in  itself,  to  set  the  whole  town  buzzing, 
for  it  only  rains  (during  a  wreek  or  two  weeks)  in  the  winter 
in  Xevada,  and  even  then  not  enough  at  a  time  to  make  it 
worth  while  for  any  merchant  to  keep  umbrellas  for  sale.  But 
the  rain  was  not  the  chief  wonder.  It  only  lasted  five  or  ten 
minutes ;  while  the  people  were  still  talking  about  it  all  the 
heavens  gathered  to  themselves  a  dense  blackness  as  of  mid 
night.  All  the  vast  eastern  front  of  Mount  Davidson,  over 
looking  the  city,  put  on  such  a  funereal  gloom  that  only  the 
nearness  and  solidity  of  the  mountain  made  its  outlines  even 
faintly  distinguishable  from  the  dead  blackness  of  the  heavens 
they  rested  against.  This  unaccustomed  sight  turned  all  eyes 
toward  the  mountain ;  and  as  they  looked,  a  little  tongue  of 
rich  golden  flame  was  seen  waving  and  quivering  in  the  heart 
of  the  midnight,  away  up  on  the  extreme  summit !  In  a  few 
minutes  the  streets  were  packed  with  people,  gazing  with 
hardly  an  uttered  word,  at  the  one  brilliant  mote  in  the  brooding 
world  of  darkness.  It  flicked  like  a  candle-flame,  and  looked 
no  larger ;  but  with  such  a  background  it  was  wonderfully 
bright,  small  as  it  was.  It  was  the  flag ! — though  no  one  sus 
pected  it  at  first,  it  seemed  so  like  a  supernatural  visitor  of 
some  kind — a  mysterious  messenger  of  good  tidings,  some 
were  fain  to  believe.  It  was  the  nation's  emblem  transfigured 
by  the  departing  rays  of  a  sun  that  was  entirely  palled  from 


406 


THE    WONDERFUL    VISITOR. 


view ;  and  on  no  other  object  did  the  glory  fall,  in  all  the 
broad  panorama  of  mountain  ranges  and  deserts.  Not  even 
upon  the  staff*  of  the  flag — for  that,  a  needle  in  the  distance 
at  any  time,  was  now  untouched  by  the  light  and  undistin- 
guishable  in  the  gloom.  For  a  whole  hour  the  weird  visitor 
winked  and  burned  in  its  lofty  solitude,  and  still  the  thousands 
of  uplifted  eyes  watched  it  with  fascinated  interest.  How  the 
people  were  wrrought  up !  The  superstition  grew  apace  that 
this  was  a  mystic  courier  come  writh  great  news  from  the  war 
— the  poetry  of  the  idea  excusing  and  commending  it — and  on 


THE  HERALD  OF  GLAD  NEWS. 


it  spread,  from  heart  to  heart,  from  lip  to  lip  and  from  street 
to  street,  till  there  was  a  general  impulse  to  have  out  the 
military  and  welcome  the  bright  waif  with  a  salvo  of  artillery  ! 
And  all  that  time  one  sorely  tried  man,  the  telegraph 
operator  sworn  to  official  secrecy,  had  to  lock  his  lips  and  chain 
his  tongue  with  a  silence  that  was  like  to  rend  them  ;  for  he, 
and  he  only,  of  all  the  speculating  multitude,  knew  the  great 


GOOD    NEWS    FROM    THE    EAST.  407 

things  this  sinking  sun  had  seen  that  day  in  the  east — Yicks- 
burg  fallen,  and  the  Union  arms  victorious  at  Gettysburg ! 

But  for  the  journalistic  monopoly  that  forbade  the  slightest 
revealment  of  eastern  news  till  a  day  after  its  publication  in 
the  California  papers,  the  glorified  flag  on  Mount  Davidson 
would  have  been  saluted  and  re-saluted,  that  memorable  even 
ing,  as  long  as  there  was  a  charge  of  powder  to  thunder  with ; 
the  city  would  have  been  illuminated,  and  every  man  that  had 
any  respect  for  himself  would  have  got  drunk, — as  was  the 
custom  of  the  country  on  all  occasions  of  public  moment. 
Even  at  this  distant  day  I  cannot  think  of  this  needlessly 
marred  supreme  opportunity  without  regret.  What  a  time 
we  might  have  had ! 


CHAPTEE    LVI. 

"TTTE  rumbled  over  the  plains  and  valleys,  climbed  the 
V  V  Sierras  to  the  clouds,  and  looked  down  upon  summer- 
clad  California.  And  I  will  remark  here,  in  passing,  that  all 
scenery  in  California  requires  distance  to  give  it  its  highest 
charm.  The  mountains  are  imposing  in  their  sublimity  and 
their  majesty  of  form  and  altitude,  from  any  point  of  view — 
but  one  must  have  distance  to  soften  their  ruggedness  and  en 
rich  their  tintings ;  a  Calif ornian  forest  is  best  at  a  little  dis 
tance,  for  there  is  a  sad  poverty  of  variety  in  species,  the  trees 
being  chiefly  of  one  monotonous  femily — redwood,  pine,  spruce, 
fir — and  so,  at  a  near  view  there  is  a  wearisome  sameness  of 
attitude  in  their  rigid  arms,  stretched  downward  and  outward 
in  one  continued  and  reiterated  appeal  to  all  men  to  "  Sh  ! — 
don't  say  a  word  ! — you  might  disturb  somebody  ! "  Close  at 
hand,  too,  there  is  a  reliefless  and  relentless  smell  of  pitch  and 
turpentine;  there  is  a  ceaseless  melancholy  in  their  sighing 
and  complaining  foliage  ;  one  walks  over  a  soundless  carpet  of 
beaten  yellow  bark  and  dead  spines  of  the  foliage  till  he  feels 
like  a  wandering  spirit  bereft  of  a  footfall ;  he  tires  of  the  end 
less  tufts  of  needles  and  yearns  for  substantial,  shapely  leaves ; 
he  looks  for  moss  and  grass  to  loll  upon,  and  finds  none,  for 
where  there  is  no  bark  there  is  naked  clay  and  dirt,  enemies 
to  pensive  musing  and  clean  apparel.  Often  a  grassy  plain 
in  California,  is  what  it  should  be,  but  often,  too,  it  is  best 
contemplated  at  a  distance,  because  although  its  grass  blades 
are  tall,  they  stand  up  vindictively  straight  and  self-sufficient, 
and  are  unsociably  wide  apart,  with  uncomely  spots  of  barren 
sand  between. 

One  of  the  queerest  things  I  know  of,  is  to  hear  tourists 


EASTERN    LANDSCAPES. 


409 


from  "  tlie  States "  go  into  ecstasies  over  the  loveliness  of 
"  ever-bloommg  California."  And  they  always  do  go  into  that 
sort  of  ecstasies.  But  perhaps  they  would  modify  them  if  they 
knew  how  old  Californians,  with  the  memory  full  upon  them 
of  the  dust-covered  and  questionable  summer  greens  of  Cali- 
fornian  "verdure," 
stand  astonished,  and 
filled  with  worship 
ping  admiration,in  the 
presence  of  the  lavish 
richness,  the  brilliant 
green,  the  infinite 
freshness,  the  spend 
thrift  variety  of  form 
and  species  and  foli 
age  that  make  an 
Eastern  landscape  a 
vision  of  Paradise  it 
self.  The  idea  of  a 
man  falling  into  rap 
tures  over  grave  and 
sombre  California, 
when  that  man  has 

seen  'New  England's  meadow-expanses  and  her  maples,  oaks 
and  cathedral-windowed  elms  decked  in  summer  attire,  or  the 
opaline  splendors  of  autumn  descending  upon  her  forests,  comes 
very  near  being  funny — would  be,  in  fact,  but  that  it  is  so 
pathetic.  No  land  with  an  unvarying  climate  can  be  very 
beautiful.  The  tropics  are  not,  for  all  the  sentiment  that  is 
wasted  on  them.  They  seem  beautiful  at  first,  but  sameness 
impairs  the  charm  by  and  by.  Change  is  the  handmaiden 
Nature  requires  to  do  her  miracles  with.  The  land  that  has 
four  well-defined  seasons,  cannot  lack  beauty,  or  pall  with 
monotony.  Each  season  brings  a  world  of  enjoyment  and 
interest  in  the  watching  of  its  unfolding,  its  gradual,  harmo 
nious  development,  its  culminating  graces — and  just  as  one 
begins  to  tire  of  it,  it  passes  away  and  a  radical  change  comes, 
with  new  witcheries  and  new  glories  in  its  train.  And  I  think 


AN  EASTERN  LANDSCAPE. 


410  CITY    OF    SAN    FRANCISCO. 

that  to  one  in  sympathy  with  nature,  each  season,  in  its  turn, 
seems  the  loveliest. 

San   Francisco,   a   truly   fascinating    city   to    live  in,   is 


A  VARIABLE  CLIMATE. 


stately  and  handsome  at  a  fair  distance,  but  close  at  hand 
one  notes  that  the  architecture  is  mostly  old-fashioned,  many 
streets  are  made  up  of  decaying,  smoke-grimed,  wooden 
houses,  and  the  barren  sand-hills  toward  the  outskirts  obtrude 
themselves  too  prominently.  Even  the  kindly  climate  is  some 
times  pleasanter  when  read  about  than  personally  experienced, 
for  a  lovely,  cloudless  sky  wears  out  its  welcome  by  and  by, 
and  then  when  the  longed  for  rain  does  come  it  stays.  Even 
the  playful  earthquake  is  better  contemplated  at  a  dis — 

However  there  are  varying  opinions  about  that. 

The  climate  of  San  Francisco  is  mild  and  singularly 
equable.  The  thermometer  stands  at  about  seventy  degrees 
the  year  round.  It  hardly  changes  at  all.  You  sleep  undec 
one  or  two  light  blankets  Summer  and  Winter,  and  never  use 
a  mosquito  bar.  Nobody  ever  wears  Summer  clothing.  You 
wear  black  broadcloth — if  you  have  it — in  August  and  Janu 
ary,  just  the  same.  It  is  no  colder,  and  no  warmer,  in  the  one 
month  than  the  other.  You  do  not  use  overcoats  and  you  do 
not  use  fans.  It  is  as  pleasant  a  climate  as  could  w^ell  be  con 
trived,  take  it  all  around,  and  is  doubtless  the  most  unvarying 
in  the  whole  world.  The  wind  blows  there  a  good  deal  in  the 


ITS    CLIMATE    AND    SEASONS.  411 

Summer  months,  but  then  you  can  go  over  to  Oakland,  if  you 
choose — three  or  four  miles  away — it  does  not  blow  there. 
It  has  only  snowed  twice  in  San  Francisco  in  nineteen  years, 
and  then  it  only  remained  on  the  ground 'long  enough  to 
astonish  the  children,  and  set  them  to  wondering  what  the 
feathery  stuff  was. 

During  eight  months  of  the  year,  straight  along,  the  skies 
are  bright  and  cloudless,  and  never  a  drop  of  rain  falls.  But 
when  the  other  four  months  come  along,  you  will  need  to  go 
and  steal  an  umbrella.  Because  you  will  require  it.  Not  just 
one  day,  but  one  hundred  and  twenty  days  in  hardly  varying 
succession.  When  you  want  to  go  visiting,  or  attend  church, 
or  the  theatre,  you  never  look  up  at  the  clouds  to  see  whether 
it  is  likely  to  rain  or  not — you  look  at  the  almanac.  If  it  is 
"Whiter,  it  will  rain — and  if  it  is  Summer,  it  won't  rain,  and 
you  cannot  help  it.  You  never  need  a  lightning-rod,  because 
it  never  thunders  and  it  never  lightens.  And  after  you  have 
listened  for  six  or  eight  weeks,  every  night,  to  the  dismal 
monotony  of  those  quiet  rains,  you  will  wish  in  your  heart  the 
thunder  would  leap  and  crash  and  roar  along  those  drowsy 
skies  once,  and  make  everything  alive — you  will  wish  the 
prisoned  lightnings  would  cleave  the  dull  firmament  asunder 
and  light  it  wdth  a  blinding  glare  for  one  little  instant.  You 
would  give  anything  to  hear  the  old  familiar  thunder  again 
and  see  the  lightning  strike  somebody.  And  along  in  the 
Summer,  when  you  have  suffered  about  four  months  of 
lustrous,  pitiless  sunshine,  you  are  ready  to  go  down  on  your 
knees  and  plead  for  rain — hail — snow — thunder  and  lightning 
—anything  to  break  the  monotony — you  will  take  an  earth 
quake,  if  you  cannot  do  any  better.  And  the  chances  are 
that  you'll  get  it,  too. 

San  Francisco  is  built  on  sand  hills,  but  they  are  prolific 
sand  hills.  They  yield  a  generous  vegetation.  All  the  rare 
flowers  which  people  in  "  the  States  "  rear  with  such  patient 
care  in  parlor  flower-pots  and  green-houses,  flourish  luxu 
riantly  in  the  open  air  there  all  the  year  round.  Calla  lilies,  all 
sorts  of  geraniums,  passion  flowers,  moss  roses — I  do  not  know 
the  names  of  a  tenth  part  of  them.  I  only  know  that  while 


THE  HOTTEST  PLACE  ON  EARTH. 

New  Yorkers  are  burdened  with  banks  and  drifts  of  snow, 
Californians  are  burdened  with  banks  and  drifts  of  flowers,  if 
they  only  keep  their  hands  off  and  let  them  grow.  And  I 
have  heard  that  they  have  also  that  rarest  and  most  curious  of 
all  the  flowers,  the  beautiful  Espiritu  Santo,  as  the  Spaniards 
call  it — or  flower  of  the  Holy  Spirit — though  I  thought  it 
grew  only  in  Central  America — down  on  the  Isthmus.  In  its 
cup  is  the  daintiest  little  fac-simile  of  a  dove,  as  pure  as  snow. 
The  Spaniards  have  a  superstitious  reverence  for  it.  The 
blossom  has  been  conveyed  to  the  States,  submerged  in  ether ; 
and  the  bulb  has  been  taken  thither  also,  but  every  attempt  to 
make  it  bloom  after  it  arrived,  has  failed. 

I  have  elsewhere  spoken  of  the  endless  "Winter  of  Mono, 
California,  and  but  this  moment  of  the  eternal  Spring  of  San 
Francisco.  Now  if  we  travel  a  hundred  miles  in  a  straight 
line,  we  come  to  the  eternal  Summer  of  Sacramento.  One 
never  sees  Summer-clothing  or  mosquitoes  in  San  Francisco — 
but  they  can  be  found  in  Sacramento.  Not  always  and 
unvaryingly,  but  about  one  hundred  and  forty-three  months 
out  of  twelve  years,  perhaps.  Flowers  bloom  there,  always, 
the  reader  can  easily  believe — people  suffer  and  sweat,  and 
swear,  morning,  noon  and  night,  and  wear  out  their  stanchest 
energies  fanning  themselves.  It  gets  hot  there,  but  if  you  go 
down  to  Fort  Yuma  you  will  find  it  hotter.  Fort  Yuma  is 
probably  the  hottest  place  on  earth.  The  thermometer  stays  at 
one  hundred  and  twenty  in  the  shade  there  all  the  time — except 
when  it  varies  and  goes  higher.  It  is  a  U.  S.  military  post, 
and  its  occupants  get  so  used  to  the  terrific  heat  that  they 
suffer  without  it.  There  is  a  tradition  (attributed  to  John 
Phenix*)  that  a  very,  very  wicked  soldier  died  there,  once,  and 
of  course,  went  straight  to  the  hottest  corner  of  perdition, — and 
the  next  day  he  telegraphed  ~back  for  his  Hankets.  There  is 
no  doubt  about  the  truth  of  this  statement — there  can  be  no 
doubt  about  it.  I  have  seen  the  place  where  that  soldier  used 
to  board.  In  Sacramento  it  is  fiery  Summer  always,  and  you 
can  gather  roses,  and  eat  strawberries  and  ice-cream,  and  wear 

*  It  has  been  purloined  by  fifty  different  scribblers  who  were  too  poor  to 
invent  a  fancy  but  not  ashamed  to  steal  one.— M.  T. 


A    PICTURE    OF    SUMMER    AND    WINTER. 


413 


white  linen  clothes,  and  pant  and  perspire,  at  eight  or  nine 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  then  take  the  cars,  and  at  noon 
put  on  your  furs  and  your  skates,  and  go  skimming  over  frozen 


SACRAMENTO. 


THREE  HOURS  AWAY. 


Donner  Lake,  seven  thousand  feet  above  the  valley,  among 
snow  banks  fifteen  feet  deep,  and  in  the  shadow  of  grand 
mountain  peaks  that  lift  their  frosty  crags  ten  thousand  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  sea.  There  is  a  transition  for  you  / 
Where  will  you  find  another  like  it  in  the  Western  hemis 
phere?  And  some  of  us  have  swept  around  snow-walled 
curves  of  the  Pacific  Railroad  in  that  vicinity,  six  thousand 
feet  above  the  sea,  and  looked  down  as  the  birds  do,  upon  the 
deathless  Summer  of  the  Sacramento  Yalley,  with  its  fruitful 
fields,  its  feathery  foliage,  its  silver  streams,  all  slumbering  in 
the  mellow  haze  of  its  enchanted  atmosphere,  and  all  infinitely 
softened  and  spiritualized  by  distance — a  dreamy,  exquisite 
glimpse  of  fairyland,  made  all  the  more  charming  and  striking 
that  it  was  caught  through  a  forbidden  gateway  of  ice  and 
enow,  and  savage  crags  and  precipices. 


OHAPTEE    LYII. 

IT  was  in  this  Sacramento  Yalley,  just  referred  to,  that  a  deal 
of  the  most  lucrative  of  the  early  gold  mining  was  done, 
and  you  may  still  see,  in  places,  its  grassy  slopes  and  levels 
torn  and  guttered  and  disfigured  by  the  avaricious  spoilers  of 
fifteen  and  twenty  years  ago.  You  may  see  such  disfigure 
ments  far  and  wide  over  California — and  in  some  such  places, 
where  only  meadows  and  forests  are  visible — not  a  living 
creature,  not  a  house,  no  stick  or  stone  or  remnant  of  a  ruin, 
and  not  a  sound,  not  even  a  whisper  to  disturb  the  Sabbath 
stillness — you  wrill  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  there  stood  at 
one  time  a  fiercely-flourishing  little  city,  of  two  thousand  or 
three  thousand  souls,  with  its  newspaper,  fire  company,  brass 
band,  volunteer  militia,  bank,  hotels,  noisy  Fourth  of  July 
processions  and  speeches,  gambling  hells  crammed  with  to 
bacco  smoke,  profanity,  and  rough-bearded  men  of  all  nations 
and  colors,  with  tables  heaped  with  gold  dust  sufficient  for  the 
revenues  of  a  German  principality — streets  crowded  and  rife 
with  business — town  lots  worth  four  hundred  dollars  a  front 
foot— labor,  laughter,  music,  dancing,  swearing,  fighting,  shoot 
ing,  stabbing — a  bloody  inquest  and  a  man  for  breakfast  every 
morning — everything  that  delights  and  adorns  existence — all 
the  appointments  and  appurtenances  of  a  thriving  and  pros 
perous  and  promising  young  city, — and  now  nothing  is  left  of 
it  all  but  a  lifeless,  homeless  solitude.  The  men  are  gone, 
the  houses  have  vanished,  even  the  name  of  the  place  is  for 
gotten.  In  no  other  land,  in  modern  times,  have  towns  so 


CALIFORNIA  — CHARACTER    OF    POPULATION.      415 

absolutely  died  and  disappeared,  as  in  the  old  mining  regions 
of  California. 

It  was  a  driving,  vigorous,  restless  population  in  those  days. 
It  was  a  curious  population.  It  was  the  only  population  of  the 
kind  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  gathered  together,  and  it  is 
not  likely  that  the  world  will  ever  see  its  like  again.  For, 
observe,  it  was  an  assemblage  of  two  hundred  thousand  young 
men — not  simpering,  dainty,  kid-gloved  weaklings,  but  stal 
wart,  muscular,  dauntless  young  braves,  brimful  of  push  and 
energy,  and  royally  endowed  with  every  attribute  that  goes  to 
make  up  a  peerless  and  magnificent  manhood — the  very  pick 
and  choice  of  the  world's  glorious  ones.  No  women,  no 
children,  no  gray  and  stooping  veterans, — none  but  erect, 
bright-eyed,  quick-moving,  strong-handed  young  giants — the 
strangest  population,  the  finest  population,  the  most  gallant 
host  that  ever  trooped  down  the  startled  solitudes  of  an 
unpeopled  land.  And  where  are  they  now?  Scattered  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth — or  prematurely  aged  and  decrepit — or 
shot  or  stabbed  in  street  affrays — or  dead  of  disappointed 
hopes  and  broken  hearts — all  gone,  or  nearly  all — victims 
devoted  upon  the  altar  of  the  golden  calf — the  noblest  holo 
caust  that  ever  wafted  its  sacrificial  incense  heavenward.  It 
is  pitiful  to  think  upon. 

It  was  a  splendid  population — for  all  the  slow,  sleepy,  slug 
gish-brained  sloths  staid  at  home — you  never  find  that  sort  of 
people  among  pioneers — you  cannot  build  pioneers  out  of 
that  sort  of  material.  It  was  that  population  that  gave  to 
California  a  name  for  getting  up  astounding  enterprises  and 
rushing  them  through  with  a  magnificent  dash  and  daring  and 
a  recklessness  of  cost  or  consequences,  which  she  bears  unto 
this  day — and  when  she  projects  a  new  surprise,  the  grave  world 
smiles  as  usual,  and  says  "Well,  that  is  California  all  over." 

But  they  were  rough  in  those  times !  They  fairly  reveled 
in  gold,  whisky,  fights,  and  fandangoes,  and  were  unspeak 
ably  happy.  The  honest  miner  raked  from  a  hundred  to 
a  thousand  dollars  out  of  his  claim  a  day,  and  what  with 
the  gambling  dens  and  the  other  entertainments,  he  hadn't  a 


416 


A    WOMAN!    A    WOMAN! 


cent  the  next  morning,  if  he  had  any  sort  of  luck.  They 
cooked  their  own  bacon  and  beans,  sewed  on  their  own 
buttons,  washed  their  own  shirts — blue  woollen  ones ;  and  if 
a  man  wanted  a  fight  on  his  hands  without  any  annoying 
delay,  all  he  had  to  do  was  to  appear  in  public  in  a  white 
shirt  or  a  stove-pipe  hat,  and  he  would  be  accommodated.  For 
those  people  hated  aristocrats.  They  had  a  particular  and 
malignant  animosity  toward  what  they  called  a  "  biled  shirt." 

It  was  a  wild,  free,  disorderly,  grotesque  society !  Men — 
only  swarming  hosts  of  stalwart  men — nothing  juvenile,  noth 
ing  feminine,  visible  anywhere ! 

In  those  days  miners  would  flock  in  crowds  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  that  rare  and  blessed  spectacle,  a  woman !  Old 


"FETCH  HER  OUT." 

inhabitants  tell  how,  in  a  certain  camp,  the  news  went  abroad 
early  in  the  morning  that  a  woman  was  come !  They  had 
seen  a  calico  dress  hanging  out  of  a  wagon  down  at  the 
camping-ground — sign  of  emigrants  from  over  the  great  plains. 
Everybody  went  down  there,  and  a  shout  went  up  when  an 


A    DELIGHTED    MINER 


417 


actual,  bona  fide  dress  was  discovered  fluttering  in  the  wind  I 
The  male  emigrant  was  visible.     The  miners  said : 

"  Fetch  her  out !  " 

He  said  :  "  It  is  my  wife,  gentlemen — she  is  sick — we  have 
been  robbed  of  money,  provisions,  everything,  by  the  Indians 
— we  want  to  rest." 

"  Fetch  her  out !     We've  got  to  see  her !  " 

"  But,  gentlemen,  the  poor  thing,  she — 

"  FETCH  HER  OUT  ! " 

He  "  fetched  her  out,"  and  they  swung  their  hats  and  sent  up 
three  rousing  cheers  and  a  tiger;  and  they  crowded  around  and 
gazed  at  her,  and  touched  her  dress,  and  listened  to  her  voice 
with  the  look  of  men  who  listened  to  a  memory  rather  than  a 
present  reality — and  then  they  collected  twenty-five  hundred 
dollars  in  gold  and  gave  it  to  the  man,  and  swung  their  hats 
again  and  gave  three  more  cheers,  and  went  home  satisfied. 

Once  I  dined  in  San  Francisco  with  the  family  of  a 
pioneer,  and  talked  with  his  daughter,  a  young  lady  whose 
first  experi 
ence  in  San 
Francisco  was 
an  adventure, 
though  she 
herself  did  not 
remember  it, 
as  she  was 
only  two  or 
three  years  old 
at  the  time. 
Her  father 
said  that,  after 
landing  from 
the  ship,  they 
were  walking 
up  the  street, 
a  servant  lead-  "  WELI'.  IF  IT  AIN'T  A  CHILD ! " 

ing  the  party  with  the  little  girl  in  her  arms.     And  presently 

27f 


418 


WAITING    FOR    A    TURN. 


a  huge  miner,  bearded,  belted,  spurred,  and  bristling  with 
deadly  weapons — just  down  from  a  long  campaign  in  the 
mountains,  evidently — barred  the  way,  stopped  the  servant, 
and  stood  gazing,  with  a  face  all  alive  with  gratification  and 
astonishment.  Then  he  said,  reverently : 

"  Well,  if  it  ain't  a  child !  "  And  then  he  snatched  a  little 
leather  sack  out  of  his  pocket  and  said  to  the  servant : 

"  There's  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  in  dust,  there,  and 
I'll  give  it  to  you  to  let  me  kiss  the  child ! " 

That  anecdote  is  true. 

But  see  how  things  change.  Sitting  at  that  dinner-table, 
listening  to  that  anecdote,  if  I  had  offered  double  the  money 
for  the  privilege  of  kissing  the  same  child,  I  would  have  been 
refused.  Seventeen  added  years  have  far  more  than  doubled 
the  price. 

And  while  upon  this  subject  I  will  remark  that  once  in 
Star  City,  in  the  Humboldt  Mountains,  I  took  my  place  in 
a  sort  of  long,  post-office  single  file  of  miners,  to  patiently 
await  my  chance  to  peep  through  a  crack  in  the  cabin  and  get 
a  sight  of  the  splendid  new  sensation — a  genuine,  live  Woman ! 
And  at  the  end  of  half  of  an  hour  my  turn  came,  and  I  put 
my  eye  to  the  crack,  and  there  she  was,  with  one  arm  akimbo, 
and  tossing  flap-jacks  in  a  frying-pan  with  the  other.  And 
she  was  one  hundred  and  sixty-five*  years  old,  and  hadn't  a 
tooth  in  her  head. 


*  Being  in  calmer  mood,  now,  I  voluntarily  knock  off  a  hundred  from 
that.— M.  T. 


CHAPTER  LVIII. 

rOR.  a  few  months  I  enjoyed  what  to  me  was  an  entirely 
new  phase  of  existence — a  butterfly  idleness ;  nothing  to 
do,  nobody  to  be  responsible  to,  and  untroubled  with  financial 
uneasiness.  I  fell  in  love  with  the  most  cordial  and  sociable 
city  in  the  Union.  After  the  sage-brush  and  alkali  deserts  of 
"Washoe,  San  Francisco  was  Paradise  to  me.  I  lived  at  the 
best  hotel,  exhibited  my  clothes  in  the  most  conspicuous  places, 
infested  the  opera,  and  learned  to  seem  enraptured  with  music 
which  oftener  afflicted  my  ignorant  ear  than  enchanted  it,  if  I 
had  had  the  vulgar  honesty  to  confess  it.  However,  I  suppose 
I  was  not  greatly  worse  than  the  most  of  my  countrymen  in  that. 
I  had  longed  to  be  a  butterfly,  and  I  was  one  at  last.  I  attended 
private  parties  in  sumptuous  evening  dress,  simpered  and  aired 
my  graces  like  a  born  beau,  and  polked  and  schottisched  with 
a  step  peculiar  to  myself — and  the  kangaroo.  In  a  word,  I  kept 
the  due  state  of  a  man  worth  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  (pros- 
pectively,)  and  likely  to  reach  absolute  affluence  when  that  silver- 
mine  sale  should  be  ultimately  achieved  in  the  East.  I  spent 
money  with  a  free  hand,  and  meantime  watched  the  stock  sales 
with  an  interested  eye  and  looked  to  see  what  might  happen  in 
Nevada. 

Something  very  important  happened.  The  property  hold 
ers  of  Nevada  voted  against  the  State  Constitution ;  but  the 
folks  who  had  nothing  to  lose  were  in  the  majority,  and  carried 
the  measure  over  their  heads.  But  after  all  it  did  not  imme 
diately  look  like  a  disaster,  though  unquestionably  it  was  one. 


420 


A    GENERAL    BREAKDOWN. 


I  hesitated,  calculated  the  chances,  and  then  concluded  not  to 
sell.  Stocks  went  on  rising ;  speculation  went  mad  ;  bankers, 
merchants,  lawyers,  doctors,  mechanics,  laborers,  even  the 

very  washerwomen 
and  servant  girls, 
were  putting  up 
their  earnings  on 
silver  stocks,  and 
every  sun  that  rose 
in  the  morning 
went  down  on  pau 
pers  enriched  and 
rich  men  beggared. 
What  a  gambling 
carnival  it  was! 
Gould  and  Curry 
soared  to  six  thou 
sand  three  hundred 
dollars  a  foot !  And 
then — all  of  a  sud- 

THE   GRACE  OF   A   KANGAROO.  den,     OTlt    WCUt     tll6 

bottom  and  everything  and  everybody  went  to  ruin  and  destruc 
tion  !  The  wreck  was  complete.  The  bubble  scarcely  left  a 
microscopic  moisture  behind  it.  I  was  an  early  beggar  and  a 
thorough  one.  My  hoarded  stocks  were  not  worth  the  paper 
they  were  printed  on.  I  threw  them  all  away.  I,  the  cheer 
ful  idiot  that  had  been  squandering  money  like  water,  and 
thought  myself  beyond  the  reach  of  misfortune,  had  not  now 
as  much  as  fifty  dollars  when  I  gathered  together  my  various 
debts  and  paid  them.  I  removed  from  the  hotel  to  a  very  pri 
vate  boarding  house.  I  took  a  reporter's  berth  and  went  to 
work.  I  was  not  entirely  broken  in  spirit,  for  I  was  building 
confidently  on  the  sale  of  the  silver  mine  in  the  east.  But  I 
could  not  hear  from  Dan*  My  letters  miscarried  or  were  not 
answered. 

One  day  I  did  not  feel  vigorous  and  remained  away  from  the 
office.     The  next  day  I  went  down  toward  noon  as  usual,  and 


MY    FIRST    EARTHQUAKE. 


421 


found  a  note  on  my  desk  which  had  been  there  twenty-four 
hours.  It  was  signed  "  Marshall " — the  Virginia  reporter — 
and  contained  a  request  that  I  should  call  at  the  hotel  and  see 
him  and  a  friend  or  two  that  night,  as  they  would  sail  for  the 
east  in  the  morning.  A  postscript  added  that  their  errand  was 
a  big  mining  speculation !  I  was  hardly  ever  so  sick  in  my 
life.  I  abused  myself  for  leaving  Virginia  and  entrusting  to 
another  man  a  matter  I  ought  to  have  attended  to  myself;  I 
abused  myself  for  remaining  away  from  the  office  on  the  one 
day  of  all  the  year  that  I  should  have  been  there.  And  thus 
berating  myself  I  trotted  a  mile  to  the  steamer  wharf  and 
arrived  just  in  time  to  be  too  late.  The  ship  was  in  the  stream 
and  under  way. 

I  comforted  myself  with  the  thought  that  may  be  the  specu 
lation  would  amount  to  nothing — 
poor  comfort  at  best — and  then  went 
back  to  my  slavery,  resolved  to  put 
up  with  my  thirty-five  dollars  a  week 
and  forget  all  about  it. 

A  month  afterward  I  enjoyed  my 
first  earthquake.  It  was  one  which 
was  long  called  the  "  great "  earth 
quake,  and  is  doubtless  so  distinguish 
ed  till  this  day.  It  was  just  after  noon, 
on  a  bright  October  day.  I  was  com 
ing  down  Third  street.  The  only 
objects  in  motion  anywhere  in  sight 
in  that  thickly  built  and  populous 
quarter,  were  a  man  in  a  buggy  behind 
me,  and  a  street  car  wending  slowly 
up  the  cross  street.  Otherwise,  all 
was  solitude  and  a  Sabbath  stillness.  As  I  turned  the  corner, 
around  a  frame  house,  there  was  a  great  rattle  and  jar,  and  it 
occurred  to  me  that  here  was  an  item ! — no  doubt  a  fight  in 
that  house.  Before  I  could  turn  and  seek  the  door,  there  came 
a  really  terrific  shock ;  the  ground  seemed  to  roll  under  me  in 
waves,  interrupted  by  a  violent  joggling  up  and  down,  and 


DREAMS  DISSIPATED. 


422 


EFFECTS    OF    THE    SHOCK. 


there  was  a  heavy  grinding  noise  as  of  brick  houses  rubbing 
together.  I  fell  up  against  the  frame  house  and  hurt  my  elbow. 
I  knew  what  it  was,  now,  and  from  mere  reportorial  instinct, 
nothing  else,  took  out  my  watch  and  noted  the  time  of  day ; 
at  that  moment  a  third  and  still  severer  shock  came,  and  as  I 
reeled  about  on  the  pavement  trying  to  keep  my  footing,  I  saw 
a  sight !  The  entire  front  of  a  tall  four-story  brick  building 
in  Third  street  sprung  outward  like  a  door  and  fell  sprawling 
across  the  street,  raising  a  dust  like  a  great  volume  of  smoke ! 
And  here  came  the  buggy — overboard  went  the  man,  and  in 


THE  "ONE-HORSE  SHAY"  OUT-DONIT. 

less  time  than  I  can  tell  it  the  vehicle  was  distributed  in  small 
fragments  along  three  hundred  yards  of  street.  One  could 
have  fancied  that  somebody  had  fired  a  charge  of  chair-rounds 
and  rags  down  the  thoroughfare.  The  street  car  had  stopped, 
the  horses  were  rearing  and  plunging,  the  passengers  were 
pouring  out  at  both  ends,  and  one  fat  man  had  crashed  half 
way  through  a  glass  window  on  one  side  of  the  car,  got  wedged 
fast  and  was  squirming  and  screaming  like  an  impaled  madman. 


INCIDENTS    AND    CURIOSITIES. 


423 


Every  door,  of  every  house,  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  was 
vomiting  a  stream  of  human  beings ;  and  almost  before  one 
could  execute  a  wink  and 
begin  another,  there  was 
a  massed  multitude  of 
people  stretching  in  end 
less  procession  down  ev 
ery  street  my  position 
commanded.  Never  was 
solemn  solitude  turned 
into  teeming  life  quicker. 
Of  the  wonders 
wrought  by  "  the  great 
earthquake,"  these  were 
all  that  came  under  my 
eye  ;  but  the  tricks  it  did, 
elsewhere,  and  far  and 
wide  over  the  town,  made  HARD  ON  THE  1NNOCENTS- 

toothsome  gossip  for  nine  days.  The  destruction  of  prop 
erty  was  trifling — the  injury 
to  it  was  wide-spread  and 
somewhat  serious. 

The  "  curiosities"  of  the 
earthquake  were  simply  end 
less.  Gentlemen  and  ladies 
who  were  sick,  or  were  tak 
ing  a  siesta,  or  had  dissipa 
ted  till  a  late  hour  and  were 
making  up  lost  sleep,  throng 
ed  into  the  public  streets  in 

a11  sorts  of  (lueer  aPParel> and 

some  without  any  at  all.  One 
woman  who  had  been  wash 
ing  a  naked  child,  ran  down 
the  street  holding  it  by  the 
ankles  as  if  it  were  a  dressed  turkey.  Prominent  citizens  who 
were  supposed  to  keep  the  Sabbath  strictly,  rushed  out  of  saloons 


•fir 


DKY   BONES   SHAKEN. 


424: 


GOOD    ADVICE    BY    A    CHAMBERMAID. 


in  their  shirt-sleeves,  with  billiard  cues  in  their  hands.  Doz 
ens  of  men  with  necks  swathed  in  napkins,  rushed  from 
barber-shops,  lathered  to  the  eyes  or  with  one  cheek  clean 
shaved  and  the  other  still  bearing  a  hairy  stubble.  Horses  broke 
from  stables,  and  a  frightened  dog  rushed  up  a  short  attic  ladder 
and  out  on  to  a  roof,  and  when  his  scare  was  over  had  not  the 
nerve  to  go  down  again  the  same  way  he  had  gone  up.  A 


"OH,   WHAT  SHALL  I  DO?" 

prominent  editor  flew  down  stairs,  in  the  principal  hotel,  with 
nothing  on  but  one  brief  undergarment — met  a  chambermaid, 
and  exclaimed : 

"  Oh,  what  shall  I  do !     Where  shall  I  go  !" 

She  responded  with  naive  serenity : 

"  If  you  have  no  choice,  you  might  try  a  clothing-store !" 

A  certain  foreign  consul's  lady  was  the  acknowledged  leader 
of  fashion,  and  every  time  she  appeared  in  anything  new  or 
extraordinary,  the  ladies  in  the  vicinity  made  a  raid  on  their 
husbands'  purses  and  arrayed  themselves  similarly.  One  man 


A    SENSIBLE    FASHION. 


425 


who  had  suffered  considerably  and  growled  accordingly,  was 
standing  at  the  window  when  the  shocks  came,  and  the  next 
instant  the  consul's  wife,  just  out  of  the  bath,  fled  by  with  no 
o*-1  .er  apology  for  clothing  than — a  bath-towel !  The  sufferer 
rose  superior  to  the  terrors  of  the  earthquake,  and  said  to  his 
wife: 

"Kow  that  is  something  Wce\     Get  out  your  towel  my 
dear !" 

The  plastering  that  fell  from  ceilings  in  San  Francisco  that 
day,  would  have  covered 
several  acres  of  ground.  For 
some  days  afterward,  groups 
of  eyeing  and  pointing  men 
stood  about  many  a  building, 
looking  at  long  zig-zag 
cracks  that  extended  from 
the  eaves  to  the  ground. 
Four  feet  of  the  tops  of  three 
chimneys  on  one  house  were 
broken  square  off  and  turned 
around  in  such  a  way  as  to 
completely  stop  the  draft. 
A  crack  a  hundred  feet  long 
gaped  open  six  inches  wide 
in  the  middle  of  one  street 
and  then  shut  together  again 
with  such  force,  as  to  ridge  up  the  meeting  earth  like  a  slender 
grave.  A  lady  sitting  in  her  rocking  and  quaking  parlor,  saw 
the  wall  part  at  the  ceiling,  open  and  shut  twice,  like  a  mouth, 
and  then-drop  the  end  of  a  brick  on  the  floor  like  a  tooth.  She 
was  a  woman  easily  disgusted  with  foolishness,  and  she  arose  and 
went  out  of  there.  One  lady  who  was  coming  down  stairs 
was  astonished  to  see  a  bronze  Hercules  lean  forward  on  its 
pedestal  as  if  to  strike  her  with  its  club.  They  both  reached 
the  bottom  of  the  flight  at  the  same  time, — the  woman  insen 
sible  from  the  fright.  Her  child,  born  some  little  time  after 
ward,  was  club-footed .  However — on  second  thought, — if  the 


"GET  OUT  YOUR  TOWEL,  MY  DEAR. 


426 


EFFECT    ON    THE    MINISTERS. 


reader  sees  any  coincidence  in  this,  he  must  do  it  at  his  own 
risk. 

The  first  shock  brought  down  two  or  three  huge  organ-pipes 
in  one  of  the  churches.  The  minister,  with  uplifted  han^s, 
was  just  closing  the  services.  He  glanced  up,  hesitated,  and 


"  However,  wre  will  omit  the  benediction  !" — and  the  next 
instant  there  was  a  vacancy  in  the  atmosphere  where  he  had 
stood. 

After  the  first  shock,  an  Oakland  minister  said  : 

"Keep  your  seats! 
There  is  no  better  place 
to  die  than  this  " — 

And  added,  after  the 
third : 

"  But  outside  is  good 
enough  !"  He  then  skip 
ped  out  at  the  back  door. 
Such  another  destruc 
tion  of  mantel  ornaments 
and  toilet  bottles  as  the 
earthquake  created,  San 
Francisco  never  saw  be 
fore.  There  was  hardly 
a  girl  or  a  matron  in  the 
city  but  suffered  losses  of 
this  kind.  Suspended  pictures  were  thrown  down,  but  oftener 
still,  by  a  curious  freak  of  the  earthquake's  humor,  they  were 
whirled  completely  around  with  their  faces  to  the  wall !  There 
was  great  difference  of  opinion,  at  first,  as  to  the  course  or 
direction  the  earthquake  traveled,  but  water  that  splashed  out 
of  various  tanks  and  buckets  settled  that.  Thousands  of  people 
were  made  so  sea-sick  by  the  rolling  and  pitching  of  floors  and 
streets  that  they  were  weak  and  bed-ridden  for  hours,  and  some 
few  for  even  days  afterward. — Hardly  an  individual  escaped 
nausea  entirely. 

The  queer  earthquake — episodes  that  formed  the  staple  of 


WE  WILL  OMIT  THE   BENEDICTION. 


ANOTHER    MILLION    LOST.  427 

San  Francisco  gossip  for  the  next  week  would  fill  a  much 
larger  book  than  this,  and  so  I  will  diverge  from  the  subject. 

By  and  by,  in  the  due  course  of  things,  I  picked  up  a  copy 
of  the  Enterprise  one  day,  and  fell  under  this  cruel  blow  : 

NEVADA  MINES  IN  NEW  YORK. — G.  M.  Marshall,  Sheba  Hurs  and  Amos  H. 
Rose,  who  left  San  Francisco  last  July  for  New  York  City,  with  ores  from  mines 
in  Pine  Wood  District,  Humboldt  County,  and  on  the  Reese  River  range,  have 
disposed  of  a  mine  containing  six  thousand  feet  and  called  the  Pine  Mountains 
Consolidated,  for  the  sum  of  $3,000,000.  The  stamps  on  the  deed,  which  is  now 
on  its  way  to  Humboldt  County,  from  New  York,  for  record,  amounted  to  $3,000, 
which  is  said  to  be  the  largest  amount  of  stamps  ever  placed  on  one  document.  A 
working  capital  of  $1,000,000  has  been  paid  into  the  treasury,  and  machinery  has 
already  been  purchased  for  a  large  quartz  mill,  which  will  be  put  up  as  soon  as 
possible.  The  stock  in  this  company  is  all  full  paid  and  entirely  unassessable. 
The  ores  of  the  mines  in  this  district  somewhat  resemble  those  of  the  Sheba  mine 
in  Humboldt.  Sheba  Hurst,  tLe  discoverer  of  the  mines,  with  his  friends  cor 
ralled  all  the  best  leads  and  all  the  land  and  timber  they  desired  before  making 
public  their  whereabouts.  Ores  from  there,  assayed  in  this  city,  showed  them  to 
be  exceedingly  rich  in  silver  and  gold — silver  predominating.  There  is  an  abund 
ance  of  wood  and  water  in  the  District.  We  are  glad  to  know  that  New  York 
capital  has  been  enlisted  in  the  development  of  the  mines  of  this  region.  Having 
seen  the  ores  and  assays,  we  are  satisfied  that  the  mines  of  the  District  are  very 
valuable — anything  but  wild-cat. 

Once  more  native  imbecility  had  carried  the  day,  and  I  had 
lost  a  million  !  It  was  the  "  blind  lead  "  over  again. 

Let  us  not  dwell  on  this  miserable  matter.  If  I  were  invent 
ing  these  things,  I  could  be  wonderfully  humorous  over  them  ; 
but  they  are  too  true  to  be  talked  of  with  hearty  levity,  even 
at  this  distant  day.*  Suffice  it  that  I  so  lost  heart,  and  so 
yielded  myself  up  to  repinings  and  sigbings  and  foolish  regrets, 
that  I  neglected  my  duties  and  became  about  worthless,  as  a 
reporter  for  a  brisk  newspaper.  And  at  last  one  of  the  propri 
etors  took  me  aside,  with  a  charity  I  still  remember  with  con 
siderable  respect,  and  gave  me  an  opportunity  to  resign  my 
berth  and  so  save  myself  the  disgrace  of  a  dismissal. 

*True,  and  yet  not  exactly  as  given  in  the  above  figures,  possibly.  J  saw  Mar 
shall,  months  afterward,  and  although  he  had  plenty  of  money  he  did  not  claim 
to  have  captured  an  entire  million.  In  fact  I  gathered  that  he  had  not  then  re 
ceived  $50,000.  Beyond  that  figure  his  fortune  appeared  to  consist  of  uncertain 
vast  expectations  rather  than  prodigious  certainties.  However,  when  the  above 
item  appeared  in  print  I  put  full  faith  in  it,  and  incontinently  wilted  and  went 
to  seed  under  it. 


CHAPTER  LIX. 

FOE,  a  time  I  wrote  literary  screeds  for  the  Golden  Era. 
C.  H.  Webb  had  established  a  very  excellent  literary 
weekly  called  the  Calif  ornian,  but  high  merit  was  no  guaranty 
of  success;  it  languished,  and  he  sold  out  to  three  printers,  and 
Bret  Harte  became  editor  at  $20  a  week,  and  I  was  employed 
to  contribute  an  article  a  week  at  $12.  But  the  journal  still 
languished,  and  the  printers  sold  out  to  Captain  Ogden,  a  rich 
man  and  a  pleasant  gentleman  who  chose  to  amuse  himself 
with  such  an  expensive  luxury  without  much  caring  about  the 
cost  of  it.  When  he  grew  tired  of  the  novelty,  he  re-sold  to 
the  printers,  the  paper  presently  died  a  peaceful  death,  and  I  was 
out  of  work  again.  I  would  not  mention  these  things  but  for 
the  fact  that  they  so  aptly  illustrate  the  ups  and  downs  that 
characterize  life  on  the  Pacific  coast.  A  man  could  hardly  stum- 
ble  into  such  a  variety  of  queer  vicissitudes  in  any  other 
country. 

For  two  months  my  sole  occupation  was  avoiding  acquaint 
ances  ;  for  during  that  time  I  did  not  earn  a  penny,  or  buy  an 
article  of  any  kind,  or  pay  my  board.  I  became  a  very  adept 
at  "  slinking."  I  slunk  from  back  street  to  back  street,  I  slunk 
away  from  approaching  faces  that  looked  familiar,  I  slunk  to  my 
meals,  ate  them  humbly  and  with  a  mute  apology  for  every 
mouthful  I  robbed  my  generous  landlady  of,  and  at  midnight, 
after  wanderings  that  were  but  slinkings  away  from  cheerful- 
ness  and  light,  I  slunk  to  my  bed.  I  felt  meaner,  and  lowlier 
and  more  despicable  than  the  worms.  During  all  this  time  I 


A    HEALTHY    OCCUPATION. 


429 


had  but  one  piece  of  money — a  silver  ten  cent  piece — and  I  held 
to  it  and  would  not  spend  it  on  any  account,  lest  the  conscious 
ness  coming  strong  upon  me  that  I  was  entirely  penniless, 
might  suggest  suicide.  I  had  pawned  every  thing  but  the 
clothes  I  had  on  ;  so  I  clung  to 
my  dime  desperately,  till  it  was 
smooth  with  handling. 

However,  I  am  forgetting. 
I  did  have  one  other  occupation 
beside  that  of  "  slinking."  It 
was  the  entertaining  of  a  col 
lector  (and  being  entertained 
by  him,)  who  had  in  his  hands 
the  Virginia  banker's  bill  for 
the  forty-six  dollars  which  I 
had  loaned  my  schoolmate,  the 
"  Prodigal."  This  man  used  to 
call  regularly  once  a  week  and 
dun  me,  ard  sometimes  oft ener. 
He  did  it  from  sheer  force  of 
habit,  for  he  knew  he  could  get 
nothing.  He  would  get  out 
his  bill,  calculate  the  interest  for  me,  at  five  per  cent  a  month, 
and  show  me  clearly  that  there  wras  no  attempt  at  fraud  in  it 
and  no  mistakes ;  and  then  plead,  and  argue  and  dun  with  all 
his  might  for  any  sum — any  little  trifle — even  a  dollar — even 
half  a  dollar,  on  account.  Then  his  duty  was  accomplished 
and  his  conscience  free.  He  immediately  dropped  the  subject 
there  always ;  got  out  a  couple  of  cigars  and  divided,  put  his 
feet  in  the  window,  and  then  we  would  have  a  long,  luxurious  talk 
about  everything  and  everybody,  and  he  would  furnish  me  a 
world  of  curious  dunning  adventures  out  of  the  ample  store  in 
his  memory.  By  and  by  he  would  clap  his  hat  on  his  head, 
shake  hands  and  say  briskly : 

"  "Well,  business  is  business — can't  stay  with  you  always !" — 
and  was  oft'  in  a  second. 

The  idea  of  pining  for  a  dun  I    And  yet  I  used  to  long  for 


SLINKING. 


430  A    FRIEND    IN    MISERY. 

him  to  come,  and  would  get  as  uneasy  as  any  mother  if  the  day 
went  by  without  his  visit,  when  I  was  expecting  him.  But  he 
never  collected  that  bill,  at  last  nor  any  part  of  it.  I  lived  to 
pay  it  to  the  banker  myself. 

Misery  loves  company.  Now  and  then  at  night,  in  out-of-the 
way,  dimly  lighted  places,  I  found  myself  happening  on  another 
child  of  misfortune.  He  looked  so  seedy  and  forlorn,  so  home 
less  and  friendless  and  forsaken,  that  I  yearned  toward  him  as 
a  brother.  I  wanted  to  claim  kinship  with  him  and  go  about 
and  enjoy  our  wretchedness  together.  The  drawing  toward 
each  other  must  have  been  mutual ;  at  any  rate  we  got  to  fall 
ing  together  oftener,  though  still  seemingly  by  accident;  and 
although  we  did  not  speak  or  evince  any  recognition,  I  think 
the  dull  anxiety  passed  out  of  both  of  us  when  we  saw  each 
other,  and  then  for  several  hours  we  would  idle  along  content 
edly,  wide  apart,  and  glancing  furtively  in  at  home  lights  and 
fireside  gatherings,  out  of  the  night  shadows,  and  very  much 
enjoying  our  dumb  companionship. 

Finally  we  spoke,  and  were  inseparable  after  that.  For  our 
woes  were  identical,  almost.  He  had  been  a  reporter  too,  and 
lost  his  berth,  and  this  was  his  experience,  as  nearly  as  I  can 
recollect  it.  After  losing  his  berth,  he  had  gone  down,  down, 
down,  with  never  a  halt :  from  a  boarding  house  on  Russian 
Hill  to  a  boarding  house  in  Kearney  street ;  from  thence  to 
Dupont ;  from  thence  to  a  low  sailor  den ;  and  from  thence  to  lodg 
ings  in  goods  boxes  and  empty  hogsheads  near  the  wharves. 
Then,  for  a  while,  he  had  gained  a  meagre  living  by  sewing  up 
bursted  sacks  of  grain  on  the  piers ;  when  that  failed  he  had 
found  food  here  and  there  as  chance  threw  it  in  his  way.  He 
had  ceased  to  show  his  face  in  daylight,  now,  for  a  reporter 
knows  everybody,  rich  and  poor,  high  and  low,  and  cannot  well 
avoid  familiar  faces  in  the  broad  light  of  day. 

This  mendicant  Blucher — I  call  him  that  for  convenience — 
was  a  splendid  creature.  He  was  full  of  hope,  pluck  and  phi 
losophy  ;  he  was  well  read  and  a  man  of  cultivated  taste ;  he 
had  a  bright  wit  and  was  a  master  of  satire ;  his  kindliness  and 
his  generous  spirit  made  him  royal  in  my  eyes  and  changed  his 
curb-stone  seat  to  a  throne  and  his  damaged  hat  to  a  crown. 


A    STREAK    OF    LUCK. 


431 


He  had  an  adventure,  once,  which  sticks  fast  in  my  memory 
as  the  most  pleasantly  grotesque  that  ever  touched  my  sympa 
thies.  He  had  been  without  a  penny  for  two  months.  He 
had  shirked  about  obscure  streets,  among  friendly  dim  lights, 
till  the  thing  had  become  second  nature  to  him.  But  at  last 
he  was  driven  abroad  in  daylight.  The  cause  was  sufficient  ; 
he  had  not  tasted  food  for  forty-eight  hours,  and  he  could  not 
endure  the  misery  of  his  hunger  in  idle  hiding.  He  came  along 
a  back  street,  glowering  at  the  loaves  in  bake-shop  windows,  and 
feeling  that  he  could  trade  his  life  away  for  a  morsel  to  eat. 
The  sight  ot  the  bread  doubled  his  hunger  ;  but  it  was  good 
to  look  at  it,  any  how,  and  imagine  what  one  might  do  if 
one  only  had  it.  Presently,  in  the  middle  of  the  street  he 
saw  a  shining  spot  —  looked 
again  —  did  not,  and  could  not, 
believe  his  eyes  —  turned  away, 
to  try  them,  then  looked  again. 
It  was  a  verity  —  no  vain,  hun 
ger-inspired  delusion  —  it  was  a 
silver  dime  !  He  snatched  it  — 
gloated  over  it  ;  doubted  it  —  bit 
it  —  found  it  genuine  —  choked 
his  heart  down,  and  smothered 
a  halleluiah.  Then  he  looked  j 
around  —  saw  that  nobody  was 
looking  at  him  —  threw  the  dime 
down  where  it  was  before  — 
walked  away  a  few  steps,  and 
approached  again,  pretending  he 
did  not  know  it  was  there,  so  that 
he  could  re-enjoy  the  luxury  of  finding  it.  He  walked  around  it, 
viewing  it  from  different  points  ;  then  sauntered  about  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets,  looking  up  at  the  signs  and  now  and  then 
glancing  at  it  and  feeling  the  old  thrill  again.  Finally  he  took 
it  up,  and  went  away,  fondling  it  in  his  pocket.  He  idled 
through  unfrequented  streets,  stopping  in  doorways  and  corners 
to  take  it  out  and  look  at  it.  By  and  by  he  went  home  to  his 


PRIZE. 


432 


AN    IMAGINARY    FEAST. 


lodgings — an  empty  queensware  hogshead,— and  employed  him 
self  till  night  trying  to  make  up  his  mind  what  to  buy  with  it. 
But  it  was  hard  to  do.  To  get  the  most  for  it  was  the  idea. 
He  knew  that  at  the  Miner's  Restaurant  he  could  get  a  plate 
of  beans  and  a  piece  of  bread  for  ten  cents ;  or  a  fish-ball  and 
some  few  trifles,  but  they  gave  "no  bread  with  one  fish-ball"  there. 
At  French  Pete's  he  could  get  a  veal  cutlet,  plain,  and  some 
radishes  and  bread,  for  ten  cents  ;  or  a  cup  of  coffee — a  pint  at 
least — and  a  slice  of  bread ;  but  the  slice  was  not  thick  enough 
by  the  eighth  of  an  inch,  and  sometimes  they  were  still  more 
criminal  than  that  in  the  cutting  of  it.  At  seven  o'clock  his 
hunger  was  wolfish ;  and  still  his  mind  was  not  made  up.  He 
turned  out  and  went  up  Merchant  street,  still  ciphering ;  and 
chewing  a  bit  of  stick,  as  is  the  way  of  starving  men.  He 
passed  before  the  lights  of  Martin's  restaurant,  the  most  aristo 
cratic  in  the  city,  and  stopped. 
It  was  a  place  where  he  had  of 
ten  dined,  in  better  days,  and 
Martin  knew  him  well.  Stand 
ing  aside,  just  out  of  the  range 
of  the  light,  he  worshiped  the 
quails  and  steaks  in  the  show 
window,  and  imagined  that- 
may  be  the  fairy  times  were  not 
gone  yet  and  some  prince  in 
disguise  would  come  along  pres 
ently  and  tell  him  to  go  in  there 
and  take  whatever  he  wanted. 
He  chewed  his  stick  with  a  hun 
gry  interest  as  he  warmed  to 
his  subject.  Just  at  this  junc 
ture  he  was  conscious  of  some 

A  LOOK  IN  AT  THE  WINDOW.  QJ\Q    at     llis     side,   8111*6     CnOUgll  J 

and  then  a  finger  touched  his  arm.  He  looked  up,  over  his 
shoulder,  and  saw  an  apparition — a  very  allegory  of  Hunger ! 
It  was  a  man  six  feet  high,  gaunt,  unshaven,  hung  with  rags ; 
with  a  haggard  face  and  sunken  cheeks,  and  eyes  that  pleaded 
piteously.  This  phantom  said : 


WEALTHY    BY    COMPARISON. 


433 


"  Come  with  me — please." 

He  locked  his  arm  in  Blucher's  and  walked  up  the  street  to 
where  the  passengers  were  few  and  the  light  not  strong,  and 
then  facing  about,  put  out  his  hands  in  a  beseeching  way,  and 
said : 

"  Friend — stranger — look  at  me  !  Life  is  easy  to  you — you  go 
about,  placid  and  content,  as  I  did  once,  in  my  day — you  have 
been  in  there,  and  eaten  your  sumptuous  supper,  and  picked 
your  teeth,  and  hummed  your  tune,  and  thought  your  pleasant 


DO  IT  STBANGER. 


thoughts,  and  said  to  yourself  it  is  a  good  world— but  you've  never 
$uif*red\  You  don't  know  what  trouble  is — you  don't  know 
what  misery  is — nor  hunger !  Look  at  me  !  Stranger  have 
pity  on  a  poor  friendless,  homeless  dog !  As  God  is  my  judge, 
28f 


434:  TWO    SUMPTUOUS    DINNERS. 

I  have  not  tasted  food  for  eight  and  forty  hours ! — look  in  my 
eyes  and  see  if  I  lie  !  Give  me  the  least  trifle  in  the  world  to 
keep  me  from  starving — anything — twenty -five  cents  !  Do  it, 
stranger — do  \^  please.  It  will  be  nothing  to  you,  but  life  to 
me.  Do  it,  and  I  will  go  down  on  my  knees  and  lick  the  dust 
before  you !  I  will  kiss  your  footprints — I  will  worship  the 
very  ground  you  walk  on !  Only  twenty-five  cents !  I  am 
tarnishing — perishing — starving  by  inches  !  For  God's  sake 
don't  desert  me ! " 

Blucher  was  bewildered — and  touched,  too — stirred  to  the 
depths.  He  reflected.  Thought  again.  Then  an  idea  struck 
him,  and  he  said  : 

"  Come  with  me." 

He  took  the  outcast's  arm,  walked  him  down  to  Martin's 
restaurant,  seated  him  at  a  marble  table,  placed  the  bill  of  fare 
before  him,  and  said : 

"  Order  what  you  want,  friend.  Charge  it  to  me,  Mr.  Mar 
tin." 

"  All  right,  Mr.  Blucher,"  said  Martin. 

Then  Blucher  stepped  back  and  leaned  against  the  counter 
and  watched  the  man  stow  away  cargo  after  cargo  of  buckwheat 
cakes  at  seventy-five  cents  a  plate ;  cup  after  cup  of  coffee,  and 
porter  house  steaks  worth  two  dollars  apiece ;  and  when  six 
dollars  and  a  half's  worth  of  destruction  had  been  accomplished, 
and  the  stranger's  hunger  appeased,  Blucher  went  down  to 
French  Pete's,  bought  a  veal  cutlet  plain,  a  slice  of  bread,  and 
three  radishes,  with  his  dime,  and  set  to  and  feasted  like  a 
king! 

Take  the  episode  all  around,  it  was  as  odd  as  any  that  can 
be  culled  from  the  myriad  curiosities  of  Calif ornian  life, 
perhaps. 


CHAPTER   LX. 

BY  and  by,  an  old  friend  of  mine,  a  miner,  came  down  from 
one  of  the  decayed  mining  camps  of  Tuolumne,  Califor 
nia,  and  I  went  back  with  him.  We  lived  in  a  small  cabin  on 
a  verdant  hillside,  and  there  were  not  five  other  cabins  in  view 
over  the  wide  expanse  of  hill  and  forest.  Yet  a  flourishing 
city  of  two  or  three  thousand  population  had  occupied  this 
grassy  dead  solitude  during  the  flush  times  of  twelve  or  fifteen 
years  before,  and  where  our  cabin  stood  had  once  been  the 
heart  of  the  teeming  hive,  the  centre  of  the  city.  When  the 
mines  gave  out  the  town  fell  into  decay,  and  in  a  few  years 
wholly  disappeared — streets,  dwellings,  shops,  everything — and 
left  no  sign.  The  grassy  slopes  were  as  green  and  smooth  and 
desolate  of  life  as  if  they  had  never  been  disturbed.  The  mere 
handful  of  miners  still  remaining,  had  seen  the  town  spring  up, 
spread,  grow  and  flourish  in  its  pride ;  and  they  had  seen  it 
sicken  and  die,  and  pass  away  like  a  dream.  With  it  their 
hopes  had  died,  and  their  zest  of  life.  They  had  long  ago 
resigned  themselves  to  their  exile,  and  ceased  to  correspond 
with  their  distant  friends  or  turn  longing  eyes  toward  their 
early  homes.  They  had  accepted  banishment,  forgotten  the 
world  and  been  forgotten  of  the  world.  They  were  far  from 
telegraphs  and  railroads,  and  they  stood,  as  it  were,  in  a  living 
grave,  dead  to  the  events  that  stirred  the  globe's  great  popula 
tions,  dead  to  the  common  interests  of  men,  isolated  and  out 
cast  from  brotherhood  with  their  kind.  It  was  the  most  singu 
lar,  and  almost  the  most  touching  and  melancholy  exile  that 
fancy  can  imagine. — One  of  my  associates  in  this  locality,  for 


436 


AN    EDUCATED    MINER. 


two  or  three  months,  was  a  man  who  had  had  a  university  edu 
cation  ;  but  now  for  eighteen  years  he  had  decayed  there  by 
inches,  a  bearded,  rough-clad,  clay-stained  miner,  and  at  times, 

among  his  sighings  and  solilo- 
quizings,  he  unconsciously  in 
terjected  vaguely  remembered 
Latin  and  Greek  sentences — 
dead  and  musty  tongues,  meet 
vehicles  for  the  thoughts  of  one 
whose  dreams  were  all  of  the 
past,  whose  life  wTas  a  failure  ; 
a  tired  man,  burdened  with  the 
present,  and  indifferent  to  the 
future ;  a  man  without  ties, 
hopes,  interests,  waiting  for 
rest  and  the  end. 

In  that  one  little  corner  of 
California  is  found  a  species  of 
mining  which  is  seldom  or  nev 
er  mentioned  in  print.  It  is 

THE  OLD  COLLEGIATE.  called  "  pocket  mining  "  and  I 

am  not  aware  that  any  of  it  is  done  outside  of  that  little  corner. 
The  gold  is  not  evenly  distributed  through  the  surface  dirt,  as 
in  ordinary  placer  mines,  but  is  collected  in  little  spots,  and 
they  are  very  wide  apart  and  exceedingly  hard  to  find,  but  when 
you  do  find  one  you  reap  a  rich  and  sudden  harvest.  There 
are  not  now  more  than  twenty  pocket  miners  in  that  entire  lit 
tle  region.  I  think  I  know  every  one  of  them  personally.  I 
have  known  one  of  them  to  hunt  patiently  about  the  hill-sides 
every  day  for  eight  months  without  finding  gold  enough  to 
make  a  snuff-box — his  grocery  bill  running  up  relentlessly  all 
the  time  —  and  then  find  a  pocket  and  take  out  of  it  two 
thousand  dollars  in  two  dips  of  his  shovel.  I  have  known  him 
to  take  out  three  thousand  dollars  in  two  hours,  and  go  and 
pay  up  every  cent  of  his  indebtedness,  then  enter  on  a  dazzling 
spree  that  finished  the  last  of  his  treasure  before  the  night  was 
gone.  And  the  next  day  he  bought  his  groceries  on  credit  as 
usual,  and  shouldered  his  pan  and  shovel  and  went  off  to  the 


POCKET    MINING. 


437 


hills  hunting  pockets  again  happy  and  content.  This  is  the 
most  fascinating  ot'all  the  different  kinds  of  mining,  and  furnishes 
a  very  handsome  percentage  of  victims  to  the  lunatic  asylum. 
Pocket  hunting  is  an  ingenious  process.  You  take  a  spade 
ful  of  earth  from  the  hill-side  and  put  it  in  a  large  tin  pan  and 
dissolve  and  wash  it  gradually  away  till  nothing  is  left  but  a 
teaspoonful  of  fine  sediment.  Whatever  gold  was  in  that  earth 
has  remained,  because,  being  the  heaviest,  it  has  sought  the 
bottom.  Among  the  sediment  you  will  find  half  a  dozen  yellow 
particles  no  larger  than  pin-heads.  You  are  delighted.  You 
move  off  to  one  side  and  wash  another  pan.  If  you  find  gold 
again,  you  move  to  one  side  further,  and  wash  a  third  pan.  If 
you  find  no  gold  this  time,  you 
are  delighted  again,  because  you 
know  you  are  on  the  right  scent. 
You  lay  an  imaginary  plan, 
shaped  like  a  fan,  with  its  han 
dle  up  the  hill — for  just  where 
the  end  of  the  handle  is,  you 
argue  that  the  rich  deposit  lies 
hidden,  whose  vagrant  grains  of 
gold  have  escaped  and  been 
washed  down  the  hill,  spread 
ing  farther  and  farther  apart 
as  they  wandered.  And  so  you 
proceed  up  the  hill,  washing 
the  earth  and  narrowing  your 
lines  every  time  the  absence  of 
gold  in  the  pan  shows  that  you 
are  outside  the  spread  of  the  fan ; 
and  at  last,  twenty  yards  up  the  hill  your  lines  have  converged 
to  a  point — a  single  foot  from  that  point  you  cannot  find  any 
gold.  Your  breath  comes  short  and  quick,  you  are  feverish 
with  excitement;  the  dinner-bell  may  ring  its  clapper  off,  you 
pay  no  attention ;  friends  may  die,  weddings  transpire,  houses 
burn  down,  they  are  nothing  to  you ;  you  sweat  and  dig  and 
delve  with  a  frantic  interest — and  all  at  once  you  strike  it ! 
T7p  conies  a  spadeful  of  earth  and  quartz  that  is  all  lovely  with 


STRIKING   A   POCKET. 


438  FREAKS    OF    FORTUNE. 

soiled  lumps  and  leaves  and  sprays  of  gold.  Sometimes  that 
one  spadeful  is  all — $500.  Sometimes  the  nest  contains  $10,000, 
and  it  takes  you  three  or  four  days  to  get  it  all  out.  The  pock 
et-miners  tell  of  one  nest  that  yielded  $60,000  and  two  men 
exhausted  it  in  two  weeks,  and  then  sold  the  ground  for  $10,- 
000  to  a  party  who  never  got  $300  out  of  it  afterward. 

The  hogs  are  good  pocket  hunters.  All  the  summer  they 
root  around  the  bushes,  and  turn  up  a  thousand  little  piles  of 
dirt,  and  then  the  miners  long  for  the  rains ;  for  the  rains  beat 
upon  these  little  piles  and  wash  them  down  and  expose  the  gold, 
possibly  right  over  a  pocket.  Two  pockets  were  found  in 
this  way  by  the  same  man  in  one  day.  One  had  $5,000  in  it 
and  the  other  $8,000.  That  man  could  appreciate  it,  for  he 
hadn't  had  a  cent  for  about  a  year. 

In  Tuolumne  lived  two  miners  who  used  to  go  to  the 
neighboring  village  in  the  afternoon  and  return  every  night 
with  household  supplies.  Part  of  the  distance  they  traversed 
a  trail,  and  nearly  always  sat  down  to  rest  on  a  great  boulder 
that  lay  beside  the  path.  In  the  course  of  thirteen  years  they 
had  worn  that  boulder  tolerably  smooth,  sitting  on  it.  By  and 
by  two  vagrant  Mexicans  came  along  and  occupied  the  seat. 
They  began  to  amusej;hemselves  by  chipping  off  flakes  from 
the  boulder  with  a  sledge-hammer.  They  examined  one  of 
these  flakes  and  found  it  rich  with  gold.  That  boulder  paid 
them  $800  afterward.  But  the  aggravating  circumstance  was 
that  these  "  Greasers "  knew  that  there  must  be  more  gold 
where  that  boulder  came  from,  and  so  they  went  panning  up 
the  hill  and  found  what  was  probably  the  richest  pocket  that 
region  has  yet  produced.  It  took  three  months  to  exhaust  it, 
arid  it  yielded  $120,000.  The  two  American  miners  who  used 
to  sit  on  the  boulder  are  poor  yet,  and  they  take  turn  about  in 
getting  up  early  in  the  morning  to  curse  those  Mexicans — and 
when  it  comes  down  to  pure  ornamental  cursing,  the  native 
American  is  gifted  above  the  sons  of  men. 

I  have  dwelt  at  some  length  upon  this  matter  of  pocket  min 
ing  because  it  is  a  subject  that  is  seldom  referred  to  in  print, 
and  therefore  I  judged  that  it  would  have  for  the  reader  that 
interest  which  naturally  attaches  to  novelty. 


CHAPTER  LXL 

ONE  of  my  comrades  there — another  of  those  victims  of 
eighteen  years  of  unrequited  toil  and  blighted  hopes — was 
one  of  the  gentlest  spirits  that  ever  bore  its  patient  cross  in  a 
weary  exile:  grave 'and  simple  Dick  Baker,  pocket-miner  of 
Dead-House  Gulch. — He  was  forty-six,  gray  as  a  rat,  earnest, 
thoughtful,  slenderly  educated,  slouchily  dressed  and  clay-soiled, 
but  his  heart  was  finer  metal  than  any  gold  his  shovel  ever 
brought  to  light— than  any,  indeed,  that  ever  was  mined  or 
minted. 

Whenever  he  was  out  of  luck  and  a  little  down-hearted,  he 
would  fall  to  mourning  Over  the  loss  of  a  wonderful  cat  he  used 
to  own  (for  where  women  and  children  are  not,  men  of  kindly 
impulses  take  up  with  pets,  for  they  must  love  something). 
And  he  always  spoke  of  the  strange  sagacity  of  that  cat  with 
the  air  of  a  man  who  believed  in  his  secret  heart  that  there  was 
something  human  about  it — may  be  even  supernatural. 
I  heard  him  talking  about  this  animal  once.  He  said : 
"  Gentlemen,  I  used  to  have  a  cat  here,  by  the  name  of  Tom 
Quartz,  which  you'd  a  took  an  interest  in  I  reckon — most  any 
body  would.  I  had  him  here  eight  year — and  he  was  the  re- 
markablest  cat  I  ever  see.  He  was  a  large  gray  one  of  the 
Tom  specie,  an'  he  had  more  hard,  natchral  sense  than  any 
man  in  this  camp — 'n'  a  power  of  dignity — he  wouldn't  let  the 
Gov'ner  of  Calif orny  be  familiar  with  him.  He  never  ketched 
a  rat  in  his  life — 'peared  to  be  above  it.  He  never  cared  for 
nothing  but  mining.  He  knowed  more  about  mining,  that 


440  THE    MINER'S    PET. 

cat  did,  than  any  man  /ever,  ever  see.  You  couldn't  tell  him 
nothV  'bout  placer  diggin's — 'n'  as  for  pocket  mining,  why 
he  was  just  born  for  it.  He  would  dig  out  after  me  an'  Jim 

when  we  went  over  the  hills  pros- 
pect'n',  and  he  would  trot  along 
behind  us  for  as  much  as  five  mile, 
if  we  went  so  fur.  An'  he  had  the 
best  judgment  about  mining- 
ground — why  you  never  see  any 
thing  like  it.  When  we  went  to 
work,  he'd  scatter  a  glance  around, 
'n'  if  he  didn't  think  much  of  the 
indications,  he  would  give  a  look 
as  much  as  to  say,  '  Well,  I'll  have 
to  get  you  to  excuse  me,'  'n'  with 
out  another  word  he'd  hyste  his  nose  into  the  air  'n'  shove  for 
home.  But  if  the  ground  suited  him,  he  would  lay  low  'n' 
keep  dark  till  the  first  pan  was  washed,  'n'  then  he  would  sidle 
up  'n'  take  a  look,  an'  if  there  was  about  six  or  seven  grains  of 
gold  he  was  satisfied — he  didn't  want  no  better  prospect  V 
that — 'n'  then  he  would  lay  down  on  our  coats  and  snore  like 
a  steamboat  till  we'd  struck  the  pocket,  an'  then  get  up  'n' 
superintend.  He  was  nearly  lightnin'  on  superintending. 

"  Well,  bye  an'  bye,  up  comes  this  yer  quartz  excitement. 
Every  body  was  into  it — every  body  was  pick'n'  'n'  blast'ii' 
instead  of  shovelin'  dirt  on  the  hill  side — every  body  wasput'n' 
down  a  shaft  instead  of  scrapin'  the  surface.  Noth'n'  would 
do  Jim,  but  we  must  tackle  the  ledges,  too,  'n'  so  w^e  did.  We 
commenced  put'n'  down  a  shaft,  'n'  Tom  Quartz  he  begin  to 
wonder  what  in  the  Dickens  it  was  all  about.  He  hadn't  ever 
seen  any  mining  like  that  before,  ?n'  he  was  all  upset,  as  you 
may  say — he  couldn't  come  to  a  right  understanding  of  it  no 
way — it  was  too  many  for  him.  He  was  down  on  it,  too,  you 
bet  you — he  was  down  on  it  powerful — 'n'  always  appeared  to 
consider  it  the  cussedest  foolishness  out.  But  that  cat,  you 
know,  was  always  agin  new  fangled  arrangements — somehow 
lie  never  could  abide 'em.  You  know  how  it  is  with  old  habits. 


TOM    QUARTZ    ON    AN    EXCURSION. 


441 


But  by  an'  by  Tom  Quartz  begin  to  git  sort  of  reconciled  a 
little,  though  he  never  could  altogether  understand  that  eternal 
sinkin'  of  a  shaft  an'  never  pannin'  out  any  thing.  At  last  he 
£0t  to  comin*  down  in  the  shaft,  hisself,  to  try  to  cipher  it  out. 
An'  when  he'd  git  the  blues,  'n'  feel  kind  o'  scruffy,  V  aggra 
vated  'n'  disgusted — knowin'  as  he  did,  that  the  bills  was  run- 
uin'  up  all  the  time  an'  we  warn't  makin'  a  cent — he  would 
curl  up  on  a  gunny  sack  in  the  corner  an'  go  to  sleep.  Well, 
one  day  when  the  shaft  wras  down  about  eight  foot,  the  rock 
got  so  hard  that  we  had  to  put  in  a  blast — the  first  blast'n' 
we'd  ever  done  since  Tom  Quartz  was  born.  An'  then  we  lit 
the  fuse  'n'  dumb  out  '11'  got  off  'bout  fifty  yards — 'n'  forgot 
'n'  left  Tom  Quartz  sound  asleep  on  the  gunny  sack.  In  'bout 
a  minute  we  seen  a  puff  of  smoke  bust  up  out  of  the  hole,  'n' 
then  everything  let  go  with  an  awful  crash,  'n'  about  four 


million  ton  of  rocks  'n'  dirt 

smoke  'n'    splinters   shot   up 

'bout  a  mile  an'  a  half  into  the 

air,  an'  by  George,  right  in  the  dead  centre  of  it  was  old  Tom 

Quartz  a  goin'  end  over  end,  an'  a  snortin'  an'  a  sneez'n',  an' 

a  clawin'  an'  a  reachin'  for  things  like  all  possessed.     But  it 

warn't  no  use,  you  know,  it  warn't  no  use.     An'  that  was  the 


442  A    PREJUDICED    CAT. 

last  we  see  of  Mm  for  about  two  minutes  V  a  half,  an'  then  all 
of  a  sudden  it  begin  to  rain  rocks  and  rubbage,  an'  directly  he 
come  down  ker-whop  about  ten  foot  off  f  m  where  we  stood 
Well,  I  reckon  he  was  p'raps  the  orneriest  lookin'  beast  you 
ever  see.  One  ear  was  sot  back  on  his  neck,  'n'  his  tail  was 
stove  up,  'n'  his  eye- winkers  was  swinged  off,  'n'  he  was  all 

blacked  up  with  powder  an' 
smoke,  an'  all  sloppy  with  mud 
'n'  slush  fin  one  end  to  the 
other.  Well  sir,  it  warn't  no 
use  to  try  to  apologize — we 
couldn't  say  a  word.  He  took 
a  sort  of  a  disgusted  look  at  his- 
AFTER  AN  EXCURSION.  self,  'n'  then  he  looked  at  us — 

an'  it  was  just  exactly  the  same  as  if  he  had  said — '  Gents, 
may  be  you  think  it's  smart  to  take  advantage  of  a  cat  that 
'ain't  had  no  experience  of  quartz  minin',  but  /think  different ' 
— an'  then  he  turned  on  his  heel  'n'  marched  off  home  without 
ever  saying  another  word. 

"  That  was  jest  his  style.  An'  may  be  you  won't  believe 
it,  but  after  that  you  never  see  a  cat  so  prejudiced  agin  quartz 
mining  as  what  he  was.  An'  by  an'  bye  when  he  did  get  to 
goin'  down  in  the  shaft  agin,  you'd  'a  been  astonished  at  his 
sagacity.  The  minute  we'd  tetch  off  a  blast  'n'  the  fuse'd  begin 
to  sizzle,  he'd  give  a  look  as  much  as  to  say :  c  Well,  I'll  have 
to  git  you  to  excuse  me,'  an'  it  was  surpris'n'  the  way  he'd  shin 
out  of  that  hole  'n'  go  f  r  a  tree.  Sagacity  ?  It  ain't  no  name 
for  it.  'Twas  inspiration  !" 

I  said,  "  Well,  Mr.  Baker,  his  prejudice  against  quartz-min 
ing  was  remarkable,  considering  how  he  came  by  it.  Couldn't 
you  ever  cure  him  of  it  ?" 

"  Cure  him  !  No !  When  Tom  Quartz  was  sot  once,  he  was 
always  sot — and  you  might  a  blowed  him  up  as  much  as  three 
million  times  'n'  you'd  never  a  broken  him  of  his  cussed  prej 
udice  agin  quartz  mining." 

The  affection  and  the  pride  that  lit  up  Baker's  face  when  he 
delivered  this  tribute  to  the  firmness  of  his  humble  friend  of 
other  days,  will  always  be  a  vivid  memory  with  me. 


EMPTY    POCKETS    AND    A    ROVING    LIFE.          443 

At  the  end  of  two  months  we  had  never  "  struck  "  a  pocket. 
We  had  panned  up  and  down  the  hillsides  till  they  looked 
plowed  like  a  field  ;  we  could  have  put  in  a  crop  of  grain,  then, 
but  there  would  have  been  no  way  to  get  it  to  market.  We 
got  many  good  "  prospects,"  but  when  the  gold  gave  out  in 
the  pan  and  we  dug  down,  hoping  and  longing,  we  found  only 
emptiness — the  pocket  that  should  have  been  there  was  as  bar 
ren  as  our  own. — At  last  we  shouldered  our  pans  and  shovels 
and  struck  out  over  the  hills  to  try  new  localities.  We  pros 
pected  around  Angel's  Camp,  in  Calaveras  county,  during  three 
weeks,  but  had  no  success.  Then  we  wandered  on  foot  among 
the  mountains,  sleeping  under  the  trees  at  night,  for  the  weather 
was  mild,  but  still  we  remained  as  centless  as  the  last  rose  of 
summer.  That  is  a  poor  joke,  but  it  is  in  pathetic  harmony 
with  the  circumstances,  since  we  were  so  poor  ourselves.  In 
accordance  with  the  custom  of  the  country,  our  door  had  always 
stood  open  and  ovr  board  welcome  to  tramping  miners — they 
drifted  along  nearly  every  day,  dumped  their  paust  shovels 
by  the  threshold  and  took  "  pot  luck  "  with  us — and  now  on 
our  own  tramp  we  never  found  cold  hospitality. 

Our  wanderings  were  wide  and  in  many  directions ;  and  now 
I  could  give  the  reader  a  vivid  description  of  the  Big  Trees 
and  the  marvels  of  the  Yo  Semite — but  what  has  this  reader 
done  to  me  that  I  should  persecute  him  ?  I  will  deliver  him 
into  the  hands  of  less  conscientious  tourists  and  take  his  bless 
ing.  Let  me  be  charitable,  though  I  fail  in  all  virtues  else. 

Some  of  the  phrases  in  the  above  are  mining  technicalities,  purely,  and  may  be 
a  little  obscure  to  the  general  reader.  In  "placer  diggings  "  the  gold  is  scattered 
all  through  the  surface  dirt ;  in  "pocket"  diggings  it  is  concentrated  in  one  little 
spot ;  in  "  quartz  "  the  gold  is  in  a  solid,  continuous  vein  of  rock,  enclosed  between 
distinct  walls  of  some  other  kind  of  stone — and  this  is  the  most  laborious  and 
expensive  of  all  the  different  kinds  of  mining.  "  Prospecting  "  is  hunting  for  a 
"placer;  '•''indications'''  are  signs  of  its  presence;  "panning  out"  refers  to  the 
washing  process  by  which  the  grains  of  gold  are  separated  from  the  dirt ;  a  "pros 
pect  "  is  what  one  finds  in  the  first  panful  of  dirt — and  its  value  determines  whether 
it  is  a  good  or  a  bad  prospect,  and  whether  it  is  worth  while  to  tarry  there  or  seek 
further. 


CHAPTER  LXIL 

AFTER  a  three  months'  absence,  I  found  myself  in  San 
Francisco  again,  without  a  cent.  When  my  credit  was 
about  exhausted,  (for  I  had  become  too  mean  and  lazy,  now,  to 
work  on  a  morning  paper,  and  there  were  no  vacancies  on  the 
evening  journals,)  I  was  created  San  Francisco  correspond 
ent  of  the  Enterprise^  and  at  the  end  of  five  months  I  was  out 
of  debt,  but  my  interest  in  my  work  was  gone ;  for  iny  corres 
pondence  being  a  daily  one,  without  rest  or  respite,  I  got 
unspeakably  tired  of  it.  I  wanted  another  change.  The  vag 
abond  instinct  was  strong  upon  me.  Fortune  favored  and  I 
got  a  new  berth  and  a  delightful  one.  It  was  to  go  down  to 
the  Sandwich  Islands  and  write  some  letters  for  the  Sacramento 
Union,  an  excellent  journal  and  liberal  with  employes. 

We  sailed  in  the  propeller  Ajax,  in  the  middle  of  winter. 
The  almanac  called  it  winter,  distinctly  enough,  but  the  weather 
was  a  compromise  between  spring  and  summer.  Six  days  out 
of  port,  it  became  summer  altogether.  We  had  some  thirty 
passengers ;  among  them  a  cheerful  soul  by  the  name  of  Wil 
liams,  and  three  sea-worn  old  whaleship  captains  going  down 
to  join  their  vessels.  These  latter  played  euchre  in  the  smok 
ing  room  day  and  night,  drank  astonishing  quantities  of  raw 
whisky  without  being  in  the  least  affected  by  it,  and  were  the 
happiest  people  I  think  I  ever  saw.  And  then  there  was"  the 
old  Admiral—"  a  retired  whaleman.  He  was  a  roaring,  ter 
rific  combination  of  wind  and  lightning  and  thunder,  and  earn 
est,  whole-souled  profanity.  But  nevertheless  he  was  tender- 


THE    OLD    ADMIRAL. 


445 


hearted  as  a  girl.  He  was  a  raving,  deafening,  devastating 
typhoon,  laying  waste  the  cowering  seas  but  with  an  unvexed 
refuge  in  the  centre  where  all  comers  were  safe  and  at  rest. 
Nobody  could  know  the  "Admiral"  without  liking  him;  and 
in  a  sudden  and  dire  emergency  I  think  no  friend  of  his  would 
know  which  to 
c  h o o s e — t o  be 
cursed  by  him  or 
prayed  for  by  a  less 
efficient  person. 

His  title  of  "Ad 
miral"  was  more 
strictly  "  official " 
than  any  ever  wrorn 
bv  a  naval  officer 

<j 

before  or  since,  per 
haps — for  it  was  the 
voluntary  offering 
of  a  whole  nation, 
and  came  direct 
from  the  people 
themselves  with 
out  any  intermedi 
ate  red  tape — the 
people  of  the  Sand 
wich  Islands.  It 
was  a  title  that 
came  to  him  freighted  with  affection,  and  honor,  and  apprecia 
tion  of  his  unpretending  merit.  And  in  testimony  of  the  gen 
uineness  of  the  title  it  was  publicly  ordained  that  an  exclusive 
flag  should  be  devised  for  him  and  used  solely  to  welome  his 
coining  and  wave  him  God-speed  in  his  going.  From  that 
time  forth,  whenever  his  ship  was  signaled  in  the  offing,  or  he 
catted  his  anchor  and  stood  out  to  sea,  that  ensign  streamed 
from  the  royal  halliards  on  the  parliament  house  and  the  nation 
lifted  their  hats  to  it  with  spontaneous  accord. 

Yet  he  had  never  fired  a  gun  or  fought  a  battle  in  his  life. 


THE   T11KEE   CAPTAINS. 


446  HOW    HE    BECAME    A    SECESSIONIST. 

When  I  knew  him  on  board  the  Ajax,  he  was  seventy-two 
years  old  and  had  plowed  the  salt  water  sixty-one  of  them. 
For  sixteen  years  he  had  gone  in  and  out  of  the  harbor  of 
Honolulu  in  command  of  a  whaleship,  and  for  sixteen  more 
had  been  captain  of  a  San  Francisco  and  Sandwich  Island  pas 
senger  packet  and  had  never  had  an  accident  or  lost  a  vessel. 
The  simple  natives  knew  him  for  a  friend  who  never  failed 
them,  and  regarded  him  as  children  regard  a  father.  It  was  a 
dangerous  thing  to  oppress  them  when  the  roaring  Admiral 
was  around. 

Two  years  before  I  knew  the  Admiral,  he  had  retired  from 
the  sea  on  a  competence,  and  had  sworn  a  colossal  nine-jointed 
oath  that  he  would  "  never  go  within  smelling  distance  of  the 
salt  water  again  as  long  as  he  lived."  And  he  had  conscien 
tiously  kept  it.  That  is  to  say,  he  considered  he  had  kept  it, 
and  it  would  have  been  more  than  dangerous  to  suggest  to 
him,  even  in  the  gentlest  way,  that  making  eleven  long  sea  voy 
ages,  as  a  passenger,  during  the  two  years  that  had  transpired 
since  he  "  retired,"  was  only  keeping  the  general  spirit  of  it 
and  not  the  strict  letter. 

The  Admiral  knew  only  one  narrow  line  of  conduct  to  pur 
sue  in  any  and  all  cases  where  there  was  a  fight,  and  that  was 
to  shoulder  his  way  straight  in  without  an  inquiry  as  to  the 
rights  or  the  merits  of  it,  and  take  the  part  of  the  weaker 
side. — And  this  was  the  reason  why  he  was  always  sure  to  be 
present  at  the  trial  of  any  universally  execrated  criminal  to 
oppress  and  intimidate  the  jury  with  a  vindictive  pantomime 
of  what  he  would  do  to  them  if  he  ever  caught  them  out  of 
the  box.  And  this  was  why  harried  cats  and  outlawed  dogs 
that  knew  him  confidently  took  sanctuary  under  his  chair  in 
time  of  trouble.  In  the  beginning  he  was  the  most  frantic 
and  bloodthirsty  Union  man  that  drew  breath  in  the  shadow 
of  the  Flag ;  but  the  instant  the  Southerners  began  to  go  down 
before  the  sweep  of  the  Northern  armies,  he  ran  up  the  Con 
federate  colors  and  from  that  time  till  the  end  was  a  rampant 
and  inexorable  secessionist. 

He  hated  intemperance  with  a  more  uncompromising  ani- 


HIS    DAILY    HABITS.  447 

mosity  than  any  individual  I  have  ever  met,  of  either  sex ;  and 
he  was  never  tired  of  storming  against  it  and  beseeching  friends 
and  strangers  alike  to  be  wary  and  drink  with  moderation. 
And  yet  if  any  creature  had  been  guileless  enough  to  intimate 
that  his  absorbing  nine  gallons  of  "  straight "  whisky  during 
our  voyage  was  any  fraction  short  of  rigid  or  inflexible  abste 
miousness,  in  that  self-same  moment  the  old  man  would  have 
spun  him  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  in  the  whirlwind 
of  his  wrath.     Mind,  I  am  not  saying  his  whisky  ever  affected 
his  head  or  his  legs,  for  it  did  not,  in  even  the  slightest  degree. 
lie  was  a  capacious  container,  but  he  did  not  hold  enough  for 
that.    He  took  a  level  tumblerful  of  whisky  every  morning  before 
he  put  his  clothes  on — "  to  sweeten  his  bilge  water,"  he  said. — 
He  took  another  after  he  got  the  most  of  his  clothes  on,  "  to  set 
tle  his  mind  and  give  him  his  bearings."     He  then  shaved,  and 
put  on  a  clean  shirt ;  after  which  he  recited  the  Lord's  Prayer 
in  a  fervent,  thundering  bass  that  shook  the  ship  to  her  kelson 
and  suspended  all  conversation  in  the  main  cabin.     Then,  at 
this  stage,  being  invariably  "  by  the  head,"  or  "  by  the  stern," 
or  "  listed  to  port  or  starboard,"  he  took  one  more  to  "  put  him 
on  an  even  keel  so  that  he  would  mind  his  helium  and  not 
miss  stays  and  go  about,  every  time  he  came  up  in  the  wind." 
—And  now,  his  state-room  door  swung  open  and  the  sun  of 
his  benignant  face  beamed  redly  out  upon  men  and  women  and 
children,  and  he  roared  his  "  Shipmets  a'hoy  !"  in  a  way  that 
was  calculated  to  wake  the  dead  and  precipitate  the  final  resur 
rection  ;  and  forth  he  strode,  a  picture  to  look  at  and  a  presence  to 
enforce  attention.    Stalwart  and  portly  ;  not  a  gray  hair ;  broad- 
brimmed  slouch  hat ;  semi-sailor  toggery  of  blue  navy  flannel 
— roorny  and  ample ;  a  stately  expanse  of  shirt-front  and  a  lib 
eral  amount  of  black  silk  neck-cloth  tied  with  a  sailor  knot ; 
large  chain  and  imposing  seals  impending  from  his  fob ;  awe- 
inspiring  feet,  and  "  a  hand  like  the  hand  of  Providence,"  as 
his  whaling  brethren  expressed  it ;  wrist-bands  and  sleeves 
pushed  back  half  way  to  the  elbow,  out  of  respect  for  the  warm 
weather,  and  exposing  hairy  arms,  gaudy  with  red  and  blue 
anchors,  ships,  and  goddesses  of  liberty  tattooed  in  India  ink. 


448 


A    DANGEROUS    ANTAGONIST. 


But  these  details  were  only  secondary  matters — his  face  was 
the  lodestone  that  chained  the  eye.  It  was  a  sultry  disk,  glow 
ing  determinedly  out  through  a  weather  beaten  mask  of  mahog 
any,  and  studded  with  warts,  seamed  with  scars, "  blazed  "  all 
over  with  unfailing  fresh  slips  of  the  razor ;  and  with  cheery 
eyes,  under  shaggy  brows,  contemplating  the  world  from  over 
the  back  of  a  gnarled  crag  of  a  nose  that  loomed  vast  and  lonely 
out  of  the  undulating  immensity  that  spread  away  from  its 
foundations.  At  his  heels  frisked  the  darling;  of  his  bachelor 

O 

estate,  his  terrier  "  Fan,"  a  creature  no  larger  than  a  squirrel. 
The  main  part  of  his  daily  life  was  occupied  in  looking  after 
"Fan,"  in  a  motherly  way,  and  doctoring  her  for  a  hundred 
ailments  which  existed  on 
ly  in  his  imagination. 

The  Admiral  seldom 
read  newspapers ;  and 
when  he  did  he  never  be 
lieved  anything  they  said. 
He  read  nothing,  and  be 
lieved  in  nothing,but"The 
Old  Guard,"  a  secession 
periodical  published  i  n 


New  York.  He  carrried 
a  dozen  copies  of  it  with 
him,  always,  and  referred 
to  them  for  all  required 
information.  If  it  was  not 
there,  he  supplied  it  him 
self,  out  of  a  bountiful 
fancy,  inventing  history, 
names,  dates,  and  every 
thing  else  necessary  to 
make  his  point  good  in  an 
argument.  Consequently 
he  was  a  formidable  antagonist  in  a  dispute.  "Whenever  he 
swung  clear  of  the  record  and  began  to  create  history,  the  ene 
my  was  helpless  and  had  to  surrender.  Indeed,  the  enemy 


THE  OLD   ADMIRAL. 


AN    UNEXPECTED    OPPONENT. 


could  not  keep  from  betraying  some  little  spark  of  indignation 
at  his  manufactured  history — and  when  it  came  to  indignation, 
that  was  the  Admiral's  very  "  best  hold."  He  was  always 
ready  for  a  political  argument,  and  if  nobody  started  one  he 
would  do  it  himself.  With  his  third  retort  his  temper  would 
begin  to  rise,  and  within  five  minutes  he  would  be  blowing 
a  gale,  and  within  fifteen  his  smoking-room  audience  would 
be  utterly  stormed  away  and  the  old  man  left  solitary  and  alone, 
banging  the  table  with  his  fist,  kicking  the  chairs,  and  roaring 

a  hurricane  of  profanity. 
It  got  so,  after  a  while,  that 
whenever  the  Admiral  ap- 
proached,  with  politics  in 
his  eye,  the  passengers 
would  drop  out  with  quiet 
accord,  afraid  to  meet  him ; 
and  he  would  camp  on  a 
deserted  field. 

But  he  found  his  match 
at  last,  and  before  a  full 
company.  At  one  time  or 
another,  everybody  had 
entered  the  lists  against 
him  and  been  routed,  except  the  quiet  passenger  Williams.  He 
had  never  been  able  to  get  an  expression  of  opinion  out  of  him 
on  politics.  But  now,  just  as  the  Admiral  drew  near  the  door 
and  the  company  were  about  to  slip  out,  Williams  said : 

"  Admiral,  are  you  certain  about  that  circumstance  concern 
ing  the  clergymen  you  mentioned  the  other  day  f — referring 
to  a  piece  of  the  Admiral's  manufactured  history. 

Every  one  was  amazed  at  the  man's  rashness.  The  idea  of 
deliberately  inviting  annihilation  was  a  thing  incomprehensible. 
The  retreat  came  to  a  halt ;  then  everybody  sat  down  again 
wondering,  to  await  the  upshot  of  it.  The  Admiral  himself 
was  as  surprised  as  any  one.  He  paused  in  the  door,  with  his 
red  handkerchief  half  raised  to  his  sweating  face,  and  contem 
plated  the  daring  reptile  in  the  corner. 
29f 


DESEKTED  FIELD. 


4:50  BROADSIDES    FROM    THE    ADMIRAL. 

"  Certain  of  it?  Am  I  certain  of  it  ?  Do  you  think  I've  been 
lying  about  it ?  "What  do  you  take  me  for?  Anybody  that 
don't  know  that  circumstance,  don't  know  anything ;  a  child 
ought  to  know  it.  Read  up  your  history !  Read  it  up  - 

,  and  don't  come  asking  a  man  if  he's  certain 


about  a  bit  of  A  B  C  stuif  that  the  very  southern  niggers  know 
all  about." 

Here  the  Admiral's  fires  began  to  wax  hot,  the  atmosphere 
thickened,  the  coming  earthquake  rumbled,  he  began  to  thunder 
and  lighten.  Within  three  minutes  his  volcano  was  in  full 
irruption  and  he  was  discharging  flames  and  ashes  of  indigna 
tion,  belching  black  volumes  of  foul  history  aloft,  and  vomiting 
red-hot  torrents  of  profanity  from  his  crater.  Meantime  Wil 
liams  sat  silent,  and  apparently  deeply  and  earnestly  interested 
in  what  the  old  man  was  saying.  By  and  by,  when  the  lull 
came,  he  said  in  the  most  deferential  way,  and  with  the  grati 
fied  air  of  a  man  who  has  had  a  mystery  cleared  up  which  had 
been  puzzling  him  uncomfortably  : 

"  Now  I  understand  it.  I  always  thought  I  knew  that  piece 
of  history  well  enough,  but  was  still  afraid  to  trust  it,  because 
there  was  not  that  convincing  particularity  about  it  that  one 
likes  to  have  in  history  ;  but  when  you  mentioned  every  name, 
the  other  day,  and  every  date,  and  every  little  circumstance, 
in  their  just  order  and  sequence,  I  said  to  myself,  this  sounds 
something  like — this  is  history — this  is  putting  it  in  a  shape 
that  gives  a  man  confidence ;  and  I  said  to  myself  afterward,  I 
will  just  ask  the  Admiral  if  he  is  perfectly  certain  about  the 
details,  and  if  he  is  I  will  come  out  and  thank  him  for  clearing 
this  matter  up  for  me.  And  that  is  what  I  want  to  do  now — 
for  until  you  set  that  matter  right  it  was  nothing  but  just  a 
confusion  in  my  mind,  without  head  or  tail  to  it." 

Nobody  ever  saw  the  Admiral  look  so  mollified  before,  and 
so  pleased.  Nobody  had  ever  received  his  bogus  history  as 
gospel  before ;  its  genuineness  had  always  been  called  in  ques 
tion  either  by  words  or  looks ;  but  here  was  a  man  that  not  only 
swallowed  it  all  down,  but  was  grateful  for  the  dose.  He  was 
taken  a  back ;  he  hardly  knew  what  to  say ;  even  his  profanity 


NEW  WEAPONS  EMPLOYED.  451 

failed  him.  Now,  Williams  continued,  modestly  and  earnestly  : 
"  But  Admiral,  in  saying  that  this  was  the  first  stone  thrown, 
and  that  this  precipitated  the  war,  you  have  overlooked  a  cir 
cumstance  which  you  are  perfectly  familiar  with,  but  which  has 
escaped  your  memory.  Now  I  grant  you  that  what  you  have 
stated  is  correct  in  every  detail — to  wit :  that  on  the  16th  of 
October,  1860,  two  Massachusetts  clergymen,  named  Waite 
and  Granger,  went  in  disguise  to  the  house  of  John  Moody,  in 
Rockport,  at  dead  of  night,  and  dragged  forth  two  southern 
women  and  their  two  little  children,  and  after  tarring  and 
feathering  them  conveyed  them  to  Boston  and  burned  them 
alive  in  the  State  House  square ;  and  I  also  grant  your  propo 
sition  that  this  deed  is  what  led  to  the  secession  of  South  Car 
olina  on  the  20th  of  December  following.  Yery  well."  [Here 
the  company  were  pleasantly  surprised  to  hear  "Williams  proceed 
to  come  back  at  the  Admiral  with  his  own  invincible  weapon 
— clean,  pure,  manv/actured  history ',  without  a  word  of  truth 
in  it.]  "Yery  well,  I  say.  But  Admiral,  why  overlook  the 
Willis  and  Morgan  case  in  South  Carolina?  You  are  too  well 
informed  a  man  not  to  know  all  about  that  circumstance.  Your 
arguments  and  your  conversations  have  shown  you  to  be  inti 
mately  conversant  with  every  detail  of  this  national  quarrel. 
You  develop  matters  of  history  every  day  that  show  plainly 
that  you  are  no  smatterer  in  it,  content  to  nibble  about  the 
surface,  but  a  man  who  has  searched  the  depths  and  possessed 
yourself  of  everything  that  has  a  bearing  upon  the  great  ques 
tion.  Therefore,  let  me  just  recall  to  your  mind  that  Willis 
and  Morgan  case — though  I  see  by  your  face  that  the  whole 
thing  is  already  passing  through  your  memory  at  this  moment. 
On  the  12th  of  August,  1860,  two  months  before  the  Waite 
and  Granger  affair,  two  South  Carolina  clergymen,  named  John 
II.  Morgan  and  Winthrop  L.  Willis,  one  a  Methodist  and  the 
other  an  Old  School  Baptist,  disguised  themselves,  and  went 
at  midnight  to  the  house  of  a  planter  named  Thompson — 
Archibald  F.  Thompson,  Yice  President  under  Thomas  Jeffer 
son, — and  took  thence,  at  midnight,  his  widowed  aunt,  (a 
Northern  woman,)  and  her  adopted  child,  an  orphan  named 


452  THE    ADMIRAL    OVERPOWERED. 

Mortimer  Highie,  afflicted  with  epilepsy  and  suffering  at  the 
time  from  white  swelling  on  one  of  his  legs,  and  compelled  to 
walk  on  crutches  in  consequence ;  and  the  two  ministers,  in 
spite  of  the  pleadings  of  the  victims,  dragged  them  to  the  bush, 
tarred  and  feathered  them,  and  afterward  burned  them  at  the 
stake  in  the  city  of  Charleston.  You  remember  perfectly  well 
what  a  stir  it  made ;  you  remember  perfectly  well  that  even 
the  Charleston  Courier  stigmatized  the  act  as  being  unpleasant, 
of  questionable  propriety,  and  scarcely  justifiable,  and  likewise 
that  it  would  not  be  matter  of  surprise  if  retaliation  ensued. 
And  you  remember  also,  that  this  thing  was  the  cause  of  the 
Massachusetts  outrage.  Who,  indeed,  were  the  two  Massachu 
setts  ministers  ?  and  who  were  the  two  Southern  women  they 
burned  ?  I  do  not  need  to  remind  you,  Admiral,  with  your 
intimate  knowledge  of  history,  that  Waite  was  the  nephew  of 
the  woman  burned  in  Charleston ;  that  Granger  was  her  cousin 
in  the  second  degree,  and  that  the  woman  they  burned  in  Bos 
ton  was  the  wife  of  John  H.  Morgan,  and  the  still  loved  but 
divorced  wife  of  Winthrop  L.  Willis.  Now,  Admiral,  it  is 
onty  fair  that  you  should  acknowledge  that  the  first  provocation 
came  from  the  Southern  preachers  and  that  the  Northern  ones 
were  justified  in  retaliating.  In  your  arguments  you  never 
yet  have  shown  the  least  disposition  to  withhold  a  just  verdict 
or  be  in  anywise  unfair,  when  authoritative  history  condemned 
your  position,  and  therefore  I  have  no  hesitation  in  asking  you 
to  take  the  original  blame  from  the  Massachusetts  ministers,  in 
this  matter,  and  transfer  it  to  the  South  Carolina  clergymen 
where  it  justly  belongs." 

The  Admiral  was  conquered.  This  sweet  spoken  creature 
who  swallowed  his  fraudulent  history  as  if  it  were  the  bread 
of  life  ;  basked  in  his  furious  blasphemy  as  if  it  were  generous 
sunshine  ;  found  only  calm,  even-handed  justice  in  his  rampart 
partisanship ;  and  flooded  him  with  invented  history  so  sugar- 
coated  with  flattery  and  deference  that  there  was  no  rejecting 
it,  was  "  too  many  "  for  him.  He  stammered  some  awkward, 
profane  sentences  about  the Willis  and 


THE    VICTOR    DECLARED    A    HERO. 


453 


Morgan  business  having  escaped  his  memory,  but  that  he 
"  remembered  it  now,"  and  then,  under  pretence  of  giving  Fan 
some  medicine  for  an  imaginary  cough,  drew  out  of  the  battle 
and  went  away,  a  vanquished  man.  Then  cheers  and  laughter 
went  up,  and  Williams,  the  ship's  benefactor  was  a  hero.  The 
news  went  about  the  vessel,  champagne  was  ordered,  an  enthu 
siastic  reception  in 
stituted  in  the  smok 
ing  room,  and  every 
body  flocked  thither 
to  shake  hands  with 
the  conqueror.  The 
wheelsman  said  af 
terward,  that  the 
Admiral  stood  up 
behind  the  pilot 
house  and  "ripped 
and  cursed  all  to 
himself"  till  he 
loosened  the  smoke 
stack  guys  and  be 
calmed  the  mainsail. 

The   Admiral's  WILLIAMS. 

power  was  broken.  After  that,  if  he  began  an  argument, 
somebody  would  bring  Williams,  and  the  old  man  would  grow 
weak  and  begin  to  quiet  down  at  once.  And  as  soon  as  he  was 
done,  Williams  in  his  dulcet,  insinuating  way,  would  invent 
some  history  (referring  for  proof,  to  the  old  man's  own  excel 
lent  memory  and  to  copies  of  "  The  Old  Guard  "  known  not 
to  be  in  his  possession)  that  would  turn  the  tables  completely 
and  leave  the  Admiral  all  abroad  and  helpless.  By  and  by 
he  came  to  so  dread  Williams  and  his  gilded  tongue  that  he 
would  stop  talking  when  he  saw  him  approach,  and  finally 
ceased  to  mention  politics  altogether,  and  from  that  time  for 
ward  there  was  entire  peace  and  serenity  in  the  ship. 


CHAPTER    LXIII. 

01ST  a  certain  bright  morning  the  Islands  hove  in  sight,  lying 
low  on  the  lonely  sea,  and  everybody  climbed  to  the  upper 
deck  to  look.  After  two  thousand  miles  of  watery  solitude 
the  vision  was  a  welcome  one.  As  we  approached,  the  impos 
ing  promontory  of  Diamond  Head  rose  up  out  of  the  ocean 
its  rugged  front  softened  by  the  hazy  distance,  and  presently 
the  details  of  the  land  began  to  make  themselves  manifest : 
first  the  line  of  beach ;  then  the  plumed  coacoanut  trees  of  the 
tropics ;  then  cabins  of  the  natives ;  then  the  white  town  of 
Honolulu,  said  to  contain  between  twelve  and  fifteen  thous 
and  inhabitants  spread  over  a  dead  level ;  with  streets  from 
twenty  to  thirty  feet  wide,  solid  and  level  as  a  floor,  most  of 
them  straight  as  a  line  and  few  as  crooked  as  a  corkscrew. 
The  further  I  traveled  through  the  town  the  better  I  liked 
it.  Every  step  revealed  a  new  contrast — disclosed  something 
I  was  unaccustomed  to.  In  place  of  the  grand  mud-colored 
brown  fronts  of  San  Francisco,  I  saw  dwellings  built  of  straw, 
adobies,  and  cream-colored  pebble-and-shell-conglomerated  coral, 
cut  into  oblong  blocks  and  laid  in  cement ;  also  a  great  number 
of  neat  white  cottages,  with  green  window-shutters ;  in  place  of 
front  yards  like  billiard-tables  with  iron  fences  around  them,  I 
saw  these  homes  surrounded  by  ample  yards,  thickly  clad 
with  green  grass,  and  shaded  by  tall  trees,  through  whose 
dense  foliage  the  sun  could  scarcely  penetrate ;  in  place  of 
the  customary  geranium,  calla  lily,  etc.,  languishing  in  dust 
and  general  debility,  I  saw  luxurious  banks  and  thickets  of 
dowers,  fresh  as  a  meadow  after  a  rain,  and  glowing  with  the 


HONOLULU,    SANDWICH    ISLANDS. 


-155 


richest  dyes;  in  place  of  the  dingy  horrors  of  San  Francisco's 
pleasure  grove,  the  "Willows,"  I  saw  huge-bodied,  wide-spread 
ing  forest 
trees,  with 
strange 
names  and 
stranger 
appear  a  n  c  e 
— trees  that 
cast  a  sliad- 

0  w  1  i  k  e    a 
t  h  u  n  d  e  r  - 
cloud,    and 
were  able  to 
stand    alone 
without    be 
ing    tied    to 
green  poles ; 

1  n    place   of 
go  1  d    fi  s  h, 
wiggling 
around  in 
glass  globes, 
assuming 
countless 
shades    and 

degrees  of  distortion  through  the  magnifying  and  diminishing 
qualities  of  their  transparent  prison  houses,  I  saw  cats — Tom 
cats,  Mary  Ann  cats,  long-tailed  cats,  bob-tailed  cats,  blind 
cats,  one-eyed  cats,  wall-eyed  cats,  cross-eyed  cats,  gray  cats, 
black  cats,  white  cats,  yellow  cats,  striped  cats,  spotted  cats, 
tarne  cats,  wild  cats,  singed  cats,  individual  cats,  groups  of  cats, 
platoons  of  cats,  companies  of  cats,  regiments  of  cats,  armies 
of  cats,  multitudes  of  cats,  millions  of  cats,  and  all  of  them 
sleek,  fat,  lazy  and  sound  asleep. 

I  looked  on  a  multitude  of  people,  some  white,  in  white 
coats,  vests,  pantaloons,  even  white  cloth  shoes,  made  snowy 
with  chalk  duly  laid  on  every  moniing ;  but  the  majority  of 


SCENES  ON  THE  ISLANDS. 


456         DRESS    AND    HABITS    OF    INHABITANTS. 

the   people  were  almost   as   dark   as  negroes — women  with 
comely  features,  fine  black  eyes,  rounded  forms,  inclining  to  the 
^  voluptuous,   clad  in  a  single  bright 

red  or  white  garment  that  fell  free 
and  unconfined  from  shoulder  to 
heel,  long  black  hair  falling  loose, 
gypsy  hats,  encircled  with  wreaths 
of  natural  flowers  of  a  brilliant  car 
mine  tint ;  plenty  of  dark  men  in 
various  costumes,  and  some  with  noth 
ing  on  but  a  battered  stove-pipe  hat 
tilted  on  the  nose,  and  a  very  scant 
^f  breech  -  clout ; — certain  smoke-dried 
If  children  were  clothed  in  nothing  but 
sunshine — a  very  neat  fitting  and  pic 
turesque  apparel  indeed. 

In  place  of  roughs  and  rowdies 
staring  and  blackguarding  on  the  coi 
ners,  I  saw  long-haired,  saddle-col  - 
FASHIONABLE  ATTIRE.  OYed  Sandwich  Island  maidens  sit 
ting  on  the  ground  in  the  shade  of  corner  houses,  gazing 
indolently  at  whatever  or  whoever  happened  along;  instead 
of  wretched  cobble-stone  pavements,  I  walked  on  a  firm 
foundation  of  coral,  built  up  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea  by  the 
absurd  but  persevering  insect  of  that  name,  with  alight  layer  of 
lava  and  cinders  overlying  the  coral,  belched  up  out  of  fathom 
less  perdition  long  ago  through  the  seared  and  blackened  crater 
that  stands  dead  and  harmless  in  the  distance  now ;  instead  of 
cramped  and  crowded  street-cars,  I  met  dusky  native  women 
sweeping  by,  free  as  the  wind,  on  fleet  horses  and  astride,  with 
gaudy  riding-sashes,  streaming  like  banners  behind  them; 
instead  of  the  combined  stenches  of  Chinadom  and  Brannan 
street  slaughter-houses,  I  breathed  the  balmy  fragrance  of  jes 
samine,  oleander,  and  the  Pride  of  India ;  in  place  of  the  hurry 
and  bustle  and  noisy  confusion  of  San  Francisco,  I  moved  in 
the  midst  of  a  Summer  calm  as  tranquil  as  dawn  in  the  Gar 
den  of  Eden  ;  in  place  of  the  Golden  City's  skirting  sand  hills 
and  the  placid  bay,  I  saw  on  the  one  side  a  frame- work  of  tall, 


THE    ANIMAL    KINGDOM. 


457 


precipitous  mountains  close  at  hand,  clad  in  refreshing  green, 
and  cleft  by  deep,  cool,  chasm-like  valleys — and  in  front  the 
grand  sweep  of  the  ocean :  a  brilliant,  transparent  green  near 
the  shore,  bound  and  bordered  by  a  long  white  line  of  foamy 
spray  dashing  against  the  reef,  and  further  out  the  dead  blue 
water  of  the  deep  sea,  necked  with  "white  caps,"  and  in 
the  far  horizon  a  single,  lonely  sail— a  mere  accent-mark  to 
emphasize  a  slumberous  calm  and  a  solitude  that  were  without 
sound  or  limit.  "When  the  sun  sunk  down — the  one  intruder 
from  other  realms  and  persistent  in  suggestions  of  them — it 
was  tranced  luxury  to  sit  in  the  perfumed  air  and  forget  that 
there  was  any  world  but  these  enchanted  islands. 

It  was  such  ecstacy  to  dream,  and  dream — till  you  got  a  bite. 
A  scor 
pion  bite. 
Then  the 
first  duty 
was  to  get 
up  out  of 
the  grass 
and  kill 
the    scor 
pion  ;  and 
the  next 
to   bathe 
the  bit 
ten  place 

with  alcohol  or  brandy ;  and  the  next  to  resolve  to  keep  out 
of  the  grass  in  future.  Then  came  an  adjournment  to  the  bed 
chamber  and  the  pastime  of  writing  up  the  day's  journal  with 
one  hand  and  the  destruction  of  mosquitoes  with  the  other — a 
whole  community  of  them  at  a  slap.  Then,  observing  an 
enemy  approaching, — a  hairy  tarantula  on  stilts — why  not  set 
the  spittoon  on  him  ?  It  is  done,  and  the  projecting  ends  of 
his  paws  give  a  luminous  idea  of  the  magnitude  of  his  reach. 
Then  to  bed  and  become  a  promenade  for  a  centipede  with 
forty-two  legs  on  a  side  and  every  foot  hot  enough  to  burn  a 


A  BITE. 


458 


FRUITS    AND    DELIGHTFUL    EFFECTS. 


RECOXNOITERING. 


hole  through  a  raw-hide.  More  soaking  with  alcohol,  and  a 
resolution  to  examine  the  bed  before  entering  it,  in  future. 
Then  wait,  and  suffer,  till  all  the  mosquitoes  in  the  neighbor 
hood  have 
crawled  in 
under  the 
bar,  then 
slip  out 
quickly, 
shut  them 
i  11  and 
si  e  e  p 
peacefully 
o  11  the 
floor  till 
morn  i  n  g. 
Meantime 
it  is  com 
forting  to  curse  the  tropics  in  occasional  wakeful  intervals. 

We  had  an  abundance  of  fruit  in  Honolulu,  of  course. 
Oranges,  pine-apples,  bananas,  strawberries,  lemons,  limes,  man 
goes,  guavas,  melons,  and  a  rare  and  curious  luxury  called  the 
chirimoya,  which  is  deliciousness  itself.  Then  there  is  the 
tamarind.  I  thought  tamarinds  were  made  to  eat,  but  that 
was  probably  not  the  idea.  I  ate  several,  and  it  seemed  to  me 
that  they  were  rather  sour  that  year.  They  pursed  up  my 

lips,  till  they  resembled  the  stem-end 
of  a  tomato,  and  I  had  to  take  my 
sustenance  through  a  quill  for  twenty- 
four  hours.  They  sharpened  my 
teeth  till  I  could  have  shaved  with 
them,  and  gave  them  a  "  wire  edge  " 
that  I  was  afraid  would  stay ;  but 
a  citizen  said  "  no,  it  will  come  off 
when  the  enamel  does  " — which  was 
I  found,  afterward,  that  only  stran- 


EATING  TAMARINDS. 

comforting,  at  any  rate. 


gers  eat  tamarinds — but  they  only  eat  them  once. 


CHAPTER   LXIV/ 

IN  my  diary  of  our  third  day  in  Honolulu,  I  find  this : 
I  am  probably  the  most  sensitive  man  in  Hawaii  to-night — 
especially  about  sitting  down  in  the  presence  of  my  betters. 
I  have  ridden  fifteen  or  twenty  miles  on  horse-back  since  5  P.M. 
and  to  tell  the  honest  truth,  I  have  a  delicacy  about  sitting 
down  at  all. 

An  excursion  to  Diamond  Head  and  the  King's  Coacoanut 
Grove  was  planned  to-day — time,  4:30  P.M. — the  party  to  con 
sist  of  half  a  dozen  gentlemen  and  three  ladies.  They  all 
started  at  the  appointed  hour  except  myself.  I  was  at  the 
Government  prison,  (with  Captain  Fish  and  another  whaleship- 
skipper,  Captain  Phillips,)  and  got  so  interested  in  its  examina 
tion  that  I  did  not  notice  how  quickly  the  time  wTas  passing. 
Somebody  remarked  that  it  was  twenty  minutes  past  five 
o'clock,  and  that  woke  me  up.  It  was  a  fortunate  circumstance 
that  Captain  Phillips  was  along  with  his  "  turn  out,"  as  he  calls 
a  top-buggy  that  Captain  Cook  brought  here  in  1778,  and  a 
horse  that  was  here  when  Captain  Cook  came.  Captain  Phil 
lips  takes  a  just  pride  in  his  driving  and  in  the  speed  of  his 
horse,  and  to  his  passion  for  displaying  them  I  owe  it  that  we 
were  only  sixteen  minutes  coming  from  the  prison  to  the 
American  Hotel — a  distance  which  has  been  estimated  to  be 
over  half  a  mile.  But  it  took,  some  fearful  driving.  The  Cap 
tain's  whip  came  down  fast,  and  the  blows  started  so  much  dust 
out  of  the  horse's  hide  that  during  the  last  half  of  the  journey 
we  rode  through  an  impenetrable  fog,  and  ran  by  a  pocket 
compass  in  the  hands  of  Captain  Fish,  a  whaler  of  twenty-six 
years  experience,  who  sat  there  through  the  perilous  voyage  as 
self-possessed  as  if  he  had  been  on  the  euchre-deck  of  his  own 


400  A    HORSEBACK    RIDE. 

ship,  and  calmly  said,  "  Port  your  helm — port,"  from  time  to 
time,  and  "  Hold  her  a  little  free — steady — so-o,"  and  "  Luff — 
hard  down  to  starboard !"  and  never  once  lost  his  presence 
of  mind  or  betrayed  the  least  anxiety  by  voice  or  manner. 
When  we  came  to  anchor  at  last,  and  Captain  Phillips  looked 
at  his  watch  and  said,  "  Sixteen  minutes — I  told  you  it  was  in. 
her !  that's  over  three  miles  an  hour !"  I  could  see  he  felt 
entitled  to  a  compliment,  and  so  I  said  I  had  never  seen  light 
ning  go  like  that  horse.  And  I  never  had. 

The  landlord  of  the  American  said  the  party  had  been  gone 
nearly  an  hour,  but  that  he  could  give  me  my  choice  of  several 
horses  that  could  overtake  them.  I  said,  never  mind — I  pre 
ferred  a  safe  horse  to  a  fast  one — I  would  like  to  have  an 
excessively  gentle  horse — a  horse  with  no  spirit  whatever — a 
lame  one,  if  he  had  such  a  thing.  Inside  of  five  minutes  I 
was  mounted,  and  perfectly  satisfied  with  my  outfit.  I  had  no 
time  to  label  him  "  This  is  a  horse,"  and  so  if  the  public  took 
him  for  a  sheep  I  cannot  help  it.  I  was  satisfied,  and  that  was 
the  main  thing.  I  could  see  that  he  had  as  many  fine  points 
as  any  man's  horse,  and  so  I  hung  my  hat  on  one  of 
them,  behind  the  saddle,  and  swabbed  the  perspiration  from 
my  face  and  started.  I  named  him  after  this  island,  "  Oahu  " 
(pronounced  O-waw-hee).  The  first  gate  he  came  to  he  started 
in;  I  had  neither  whip  nor  spur,  and  so  I  simply  argued 
the  case  with  him.  He  resisted  argument,  bnt  ultimately 
yielded  to  insult  and  abuse.  He  backed  out  of  that  gate  and 
steered  for  another  one  on  the  other  side  of  the  street.  I 
triumphed  by  my  former  process.  Within  the  next  six  hun 
dred  yards  he  crossed  the  street  fourteen  times  and  attempted 
thirteen  gates,  and  in  the  meantime  the  tropical  sun  was  beat 
ing  down  and  threatening  to  cave  the  top  of  my  head  in,  and 
I  was  literally  dripping  w^ith.  perspiration.  He  abandoned  the 
gate  business  after  that  and  went  along  peaceably  enough,  but 
absorbed  in  meditation.  I  noticed  this  latter  circumstance, 
and  it  soon  began  to  fill  me  with  apprehension.  I  said  to  my 
self,  this  creature  is  planning  some  new  outrage,  some  fresh 
deviltry  or  other — no  horse  ever  thought  over  a  subject  so  pro 
foundly  as  this  one  is  doing  just  for  nothing.  The  more  this 


A    VICIOUS    ANIMAL. 


461' 


thing  preyed  upon  my  mind  the  more  uneasy  I  became,  until 
the  suspense  became  almost  unbearable  and  I  dismounted  to 
see  if  there  was  anything  wild  in  his  eye — for  I  had  heard 
that  the  eye  of  this  noblest  of  our  domestic  animals  is  very 
expressive.  I  cannot  describe  what  a  load  of  anxiety  was 


LOOKING  FOR  MISCHIEF. 


lifted  from  my  mind  when  I  found  that  he  was  only  asleep. 
I  woke  him  up  and  started  him  into  a  faster  walk,  and  then 
the  villainy  of  his  nature  came  out  again.  He  tried  to  climb 
over  a  stone  wall,  five  or  six  feet  high.  I  saw  that  I  must 
apply  force  to  this  horse,  and  that  I  might  as  well  begin  first 
as  last.  I  plucked  a  stout  switch  from  a  tamarind  tree,  and  the 
moment  he  saw  it,  he  surrendered.  He  broke  into  a  convul 
sive  sort  of  a  canter,  which  had  three  short  steps  in  it  and  one 
long  one,  and  reminded  me  alternately  of  the  clattering  shake 
of  the  great  earthquake,  and  the  sweeping  plunging  of  the  Ajax 
in  a  storm. 

And  now  there  can  be  no  fitter  occasion  than  the  present  to 
pronounce  a  left-handed  blessing  upon  the  man  who  invented 
the  American  saddle.  There  is  no  seat  to  speak  of  about  it — 


462 


NATURE    AND    ART. 


one  might  as  well  sit  in  a  shovel — and  the  stirrups  are  nothing 
but  an  ornamental  nuisance.  If  I  were  to  write  down  here  all 
the  abuse  I  expended  on  those  stirrups,  it  would  make  a  large 
book,  even  without  pictures.  Sometimes  I  got  one  foot  so  far 
through,  that  the  stirrup  partook  of  the  nature  of  an  anklet ; 
sometimes  both  feet  were  through,  and  I  was  handcuffed  by 
the  legs;  and  sometimes  my  feet  got  clear  out  and  left  the  stir 
rups  wildly  dangling  about  my  shins.  Even  when  I  was  in 
proper  position  and  carefully  balanced  upon  the  balls  of  my 
feet,  there  was  no  comfort  in  it,  on  account  of  my  nervous 
dread  that  they  were  going  to  slip  one  way  or  the  other  in  a 
moment.  But  the  subject  is  too  exasperating  to  write  about. 

A  mile  and  a  half  from  town,  I  came  to  a  grove  of  tall  cocoa- 
nut  trees,  with  clean,  branchless  stems  reaching  straight  up 
sixty  or  seventy  feet  and  topped  with  a  spray  of  green  foliage 
she  1 1  e  r  i  n  g 
clusters  of  co- 
c  o  a-n  n  t  s  — 
not  more  pic- 
t ur e  sq  u  e 
than  a  forest 
of  collossal 
ragged  para- 
sols,  with 
bunches  of 
magnified 
grapes  under 
them,  would 

be.  I  once  heard  a  grouty  northern  invalid  say  that  a  cocoa- 
nut  tree  might  be  poetical,  possibly  it  was ;  but  it  looked  like 
a  feather-duster  struck  by  lightning.  I  think  that  describes 
it  better  than  a  picture — and  yet,  without  any  question,  there 
is  something  fascinating  about  a  cocoa-nut  tree — arid  graceful, 
too. 

About  a  dozen  cottages,  some  frame  and  the  others  of  native 
grass,  nestled  sleepily  in  the  shade  here  and  there.  The  grass 
cabins  are  of  a  grayish  color,  are  shaped  much  like  our  own 
cottages,  only  with  higher  and  steeper  roofs  usually,  and  are 


A  FAMILY  LIKENESS 


INTERESTING    RUINS.  463 

made  of  some  kind  of  weed  strongly  bound  together  in  bun 
dles.  The  roofs  are  very  thick,  and  so  are  the  walls ;  the  lat 
ter  have  square  holes  in  them  for  windows.  At  a  little  distance 
these  cabins  have  a  furry  appearance,  as  if  they  might  be  made 
of  bear  skins.  They  are  very  cool  and  pleasant  inside.  The 
King's  flag  was  flying  from  the '  roof  of  one  of  the  cottages, 
and  His  Majesty  was  probably  within.  He  owns  the  whole 
concern  thereabouts,  and  passes  his  time  there  frequently,  on 
sultry  days  "  laying  off."  The  spot  is  called  "  The  King's 
Grove." 

Near  by  is  an  interesting  ruin — the  meagre  remains  of  an 
ancient  heathen  temple — a  place  where  human  sacrifices  were 
offered  up  in  those  old  bygone  days  when  the  simple  child  of 
nature,  yielding  momentarily  to  sin  when  sorely  tempted, 
acknowledged  his  error  when  calm  reflection  had  shown  it  him, 
and  came  forward  with  noble  frankness  and  offered  up  his 
grandmother  as  an  atoning  sacrifice — in  those  old  days  when 
the  luckless  sinner  could  keep  on  cleansing  his  conscience  and 
achieving  periodical  happiness  as  long  as  his  relations  held  out ; 
long,  long  before  the  missionaries  braved  a  thousand  privations 
to  come  and  make  them  permanently  miserable  by  telling  them 
how  beautiful  and  how  blissful  a  place  heaven  is,  and  how 
nearly  impossible  it  is  to  get  there ;  and  showed  the  poor  native 
how  dreary  a  place  perdition  is  and  what  unnecessarily  liberal 
facilities  there  are  for  going  to  it ;  showed  him  how,  in  his 
ignorance  he  had  gone  and  fooled  away  all  his  kinfolks  to  no 
purpose ;  showed  him  what  rapture  it  is  to  work  all  day  long 
for  fifty  cents  to  buy  food  for  next  day  with,  as  compared  with 
fishing  for  pastime  and  lolling  in  the  shade  through  eternal 
Summer,  and  eating  of  the  bounty  that  nobody  labored  to  pro 
vide  but  Nature.  How  sad  it  is  to  think  of  the  multitudes 
who  have  gone  to  their  graves  in  this  beautiful  island  and  never 
knew  there  was  a  hell ! 

This  ancient  temple  was  built  of  rough  blocks  -  of  lava,  and 
was  simply  a  roofless  inclosure  a  hundred  and  thirty  feet  long 
and  seventy  wide — nothing  but  naked  walls,  very  thick,  but 
not  much  higher  than  a  man's  head.  They  will  last  for  ages 
no  doubt,  if  left  unmolested.  Its  three  altars  and  other  sacred 


4:64  ALL    PKAISE    TO    THE    MISSIONARIES. 

appurtenances  have  crumbled  and  passed  away  years  ago.  It 
is  said  that  in  the  old  times  thousands  of  human  beings  were 
slaughtered  here,  in  the  presence  of  naked  and  howling  savages. 
If  these  mute  stones  could  speak,  what  tales  they  could  tell, 
what  pictures  they  could  describe,  of  fettered  victims  writhing 
under  the  knife  ;  of  massed  forms  straining  forward  out  of  the 
gloom,  with  ferocious  faces  lit  up  by  the  sacrificial  fires  ;  of  the 
background  of  ghostly  trees ;  of  the  dark  pyramid  of  Diamond 
Head  standing  sentinel  over  the  uncanny  scene,  and  the  peace 
ful  moon  looking  down  upon  it  through  rifts  in  the  cloud-rack  ! 

When  Kamehameha  (pronounced  Ka-may-ha-may-ah)  the 
Great — who  was  a  sort  of  a  Napoleon  in  military  genius  and 
uniform  success — invaded  this  island  of  Oahu  three  quarters 
of  a  century  ago,  and  exterminated  the  army  sent  to  oppose 
him,  and  took  full  and  final  possession  of  the  country,  he  search 
ed  out  the  dead  body  of  the  King  of  Oahu,  and  those  of  the 
principal  chiefs,  and  impaled  their  heads  on  the  walls  of  this 
temple. 

Those  were  savage  times  when  this  old  slaughter-house  was 
in  its  prime.  The  King  and  the  chiefs  ruled  the  common  herd 
with  a  rod  of  iron ;  made  them  gather  all  the  provisions  the 
masters  needed ;  build  all  the  houses  and  temples ;  stand  all 
the  expenses,  of  whatever  kind ;  take  kicks  and  cuffs  for  thanks ; 
drag  out  lives  well  flavored  with  misery,  arid  then  suffer  death 
for  trifling  offences  or  yield  up  their  lives  on  the  sacrificial  altars 
to  purchase  favors  from  the  gods  for  their  hard  rulers.  The 
missionaries  have  clothed  them,  educated  them,  broken  up  the 
tyrannous  authority  of  their  chiefs,  and  given  them  freedom 
and  the  right  to  enjoy  whatever  their  hands  and  brains  produce 
with  equal  laws  for  all,  and  punishment  for  all  alike  who  trans 
gress  them.  The  contrast  is  so  strong — the  benefit  conferred 
upon  this  people  by  the  missionaries  is  so  prominent,  so  palpa 
ble  and  so  unquestionable,  that  the  frankest  compliment  I  can 
pay  them,  and  the  best,  is  simply  to  point  to  the  condition  of 
the  Sandwich  Islanders  of  Captain  Cook's  time,  and  their  con 
dition  to-day.  Their  work  speaks  for  itself. 


CHAPTER    LXY. 

BY  and  by,  after  a  rugged  climb,  we  halted  on  the  summit 
of  a  hill  which  commanded  a  far-reaching  view.  The 
moon  rose  and  flooded  mountain  and  valley  and  ocean  with 
a  mellow  radiance,  and  out  of  the  shadows  of  the  foliage  the 
distant  lights  of  Honolulu  glinted  like  an  encampment  of  fire 
flies.  The  air  was  heavy  with  the  fragrance  of  flowers.  The 
halt  was  brief. — G-ayly  laughing  and  talking,  the  party  galloped 
on,  and  I  clung  to  the  pommel  and  cantered  after.  Presently  we 
came  to  a  place  where  no  grass  grew — a  wide  expanse  of  deep 
sand.  They  said  it  was  an  old  battle  ground.  All  around 
everywhere,  not  three  feet  apart,  the  bleached  bones  of  men 
gleamed  white  in  the  moonlight.  We  picked  up  a  lot  of  them 
for  mementoes.  I  got  quite  a  number  of  arm  bones  and  leg 
bones — of  great  chiefs,  may  be,  who  had  fought  savagely  in  that 
fearful  battle  in  the  old  days,  when  blood  flowed  like  wine 
where  we  now  stood. — and  wore  the  choicest  of  them  out  on 
Oahu  afterward,  trying  to  make  him  go.  All  sorts  of  bones 
could  be  found  except  skulls ;  but  a  citizen  said,  irreverently, 
that  there  had  been  an  unusual  number  of  "  skull-hunters  " 
there  lately — a  species  of  sportsmen  I  had  never  heard  of 
before. 

Nothing  whatever  is  known  about  this  place — its  story  is  a 
secret  that  will  never  be  revealed.     The  oldest  natives  make 

no  pretense  of  being  possessed  of  its  history.     They  say  these 
30j* 


4:66  A    FRIGHTFUL    LEAP. 

bones  were  here  when  they  were  children.  They  were  here 
when  their  grandfathers  were  children — but  how  they  came 
here,  they  can  only  conjecture.  Many  people  believe  this  spot 
to  be  an  ancient  battle-ground,  and  it  is  usual  to  call  it  so ;  and 
they  believe  that  these  skeletons  have  lain  for  ages  just  where 
their  proprietors  fell  in  the  great  fight.  Other  people  believe 
that  Kamehameha  I.  fought  his  first  battle  here.  On 
this  point,  I  have  heard  a  story,  which  may  have  been  taken 
from  one  of  the  numerous  books  which  have  been  written  con 
cerning  these  islands — I  do  not  know  where  the  narrator  got 
it.  He  said  that  when  Kamehameha  (who  was  at  first  merely 
a  subordinate  chief  on  the  island  of  Hawaii),  landed  here,  he 
brought  a  large  army  with  him,  and  encamped  at  Waikiki. 
The  Oahuans  marched  against  him,  and  so  confident  were  they 
of  success  that  they  readily  acceded  to  a  demand  of  their  priests 
that  they  should  draw  a  line  where  these  bones  now  lie,  and 
take  an  oath  that,  if  forced  to  retreat  at  all,  they  would  never 
retreat  beyond  this  boundary.  The  priests  told  them  that 
death  and  everlasting  punishment  would  overtake  any  who 
violated  the  oath,  and  the  march  was  resumed.  Kamehameha 
drove  them  back  step  by  step ;  the  priests  fought  in  the  front 
rank  and  exhorted  them  both  by  voice  and  inspiriting  example 
to  remember  their  oath — to  die,  if  need  be,  but  never  cross  the 
fatal  line.  The  struggle  was  manfully  maintained,  but  at  last 
the  chief  priest  fell,  pierced  to  the  heart  with  a  spear,  and  the 
unlucky  omen  fell  like  a  blight  upon  the  brave  souls  at  his 
back ;  with  a  triumphant  shout  the  invaders  pressed  forward — 
the  line  was  crossed — the  offended  gods  deserted  the  despairing 
army,  and,  accepting  the  doom  their  perjury  had  brought  upon 
them,  they  broke  and  fled  over  the  plain  where  Honolulu  stands 
now — up  the  beautiful  Nuuaiiu  Yalley — paused  a  moment, 
hemmed  in  by  precipitous  mountains  on  either  hand  and  the 
frightful  precipice  of  the  Pari  in  front,  and  then  were  driven 
over — a  sheer  plunge  of  six  hundred  feet ! 

The  story  is  pretty  enough,  but  Mr.  Jarves'  excellent  history 
says  the  Oahuans  were  intrenched  in  Nuuanu  Yalley ;  that 


AN    APPRECIATIVE    HORSE. 


467 


Kamehamelia  ousted  them,  routed  them,  pursued  them  up  the 
valley  and  drove  them  over  the  precipice.  He  makes  no  men 
tion  uf  our  bone-yard  at  all  in  his  book. 

Impressed  by  the  profound  silence  and  repose  that  rested 
over  the  beautiful  landscape,  and  being,  as  usual,  in  the  rear,  I 
gave  voice  to  my  thoughts.  I  said : 

"  What  a  picture  is  here  slumbering  in  the  solemn  glory  of 
the  moon  !  How  strong  the  rugged  outlines  of  the  dead  vol 
cano  stand  out  against  the  clear  sky  !  What  a  snowy  fringe 
marks  the  bursting  of  the  surf  over  the  long,  curved  reef! 
How  calmly  the  dim  city  sleeps  yonder  in  the  plain !  How 
soft  the  shadows  lie  upon  the  stately  mountains  that  border  the 
dream-haunted  Mauoa  Valley  !  What  a  grand  pyramid  of  bil 
lowy  clouds  towers  above  the  storied  Pari !  How  the  grim 
warriors  of  the  past  seem  flocking  in  ghostly  squadrons  to  their 
ancient  battlefield  again — how  the  wails  of  the  dying  well  up 
from  the — 

At  this  point  the  horse  called  Calm  sat  down  in  the  sand. 
Sat  down  to  listen,  I 
suppose.  I^ever  mind 
what  he  heard,  I  stop 
ped  apostrcphi  sing 
and  convinced  him 
that  I  was  not  a  man 
to  allow  contempt  of 
Court  on  the  part  of 
a  horse.  I  broke  the 
back-bone  of  a  Chief 
over  his  rump  and 
set  out  to  join  the 
cavalcade  again. 

Very  considerably  fagged  out  we  arrived  in  town  c.t 
9  o'clock  at  night,  myself  in  the  lead — for  when  my  horse 
finally  came  to  understand  that  he  was  homeward  bound  and 
hadn't  far  to  go,  he  turned  his  attention  strictly  to  business. 

This  is  a  good  time  to  drop  in  a  paragraph  of  information. 


SAT  DOWN   TO  LISTEN. 


468  CONVENIENT    BROTHERS. 

There  is  no  regular  livery  stable  in  Honolulu,  or,  indeed,  in  any 
part  of  the  kingdom  of  Hawaii ;  therefore  unless  you  are  acquaint 
ed  with  wealthy  residents  (who  all  have  good  horses),  you  must 
hire  animals  of  the  wretchedest  description  from  the  Kanakas, 
(i.  e.  natives.)  Any  horse  you  hire,  even  though  it  be  from  a  white 
man,  is  not  often  of  much  account,  because  it  will  be  brought 
in  for  you  from  some  ranch,  and  has  necessarily  been  leading 
a  hard  life.  If  the  Kanakas  who  have  been  caring  for  him 
(inveterate  riders  they  are)  have  not  ridden  him  half  to  death 
every  day  themselves,  you  can  depend  upon  it  they  have  been 
doing  the  same  thing  by  proxy,  by  clandestinely  hiring  him 
out.  At  least,  so  I  am  informed.  The  result  is,  that  no  horse 
has  a  chance  to  eat,  drink,  rest,  recuperate,  or  look  well  or  feel 
well,  and  so  strangers  go  about  the  Islands  mounted  as  I  waa 
to-day. 

In  hiring  a  horse  from  a  Kanaka,  you  must  have  all  your 
eyes  about  you,  because  you  can  rest  satisfied  that  you  are  dealing 
with  a  shrewd  unprincipled  rascal.  You  may  leave  your  door 
open  and  your  trunk  unlocked  as  long  as  you  please,  and  he 
will  not  meddle  with  your  property ;  lie  has  no  important  vices 
and  no  inclination  to  commit  robbery  on  a  large  scale ;  but  if 
he  can  get  ahead  of  you  in  the  horse  business,  he  will  take  a 
genuine  delight  in  doing  it.  This  trait  is  characteristic  of  horse 
jockeys,  the  world  over,  is  it  not  ?  He  will  overcharge  you  if 
he  can ;  he  will  hire  you  a  fine-looking  horse  at  night  (any 
body's — may  be  the  King's,  if  the  royal  steed  be  in  conve 
nient  view),  and  bring  you  the  mate  to  my  Oahu  in  the  morn 
ing,  and  contend  that  it  is  the  same  animal.  If  you  make  trou 
ble,  he  will  get  out  by  saying  it  was  not  himself  who  made 
the  bargain  with  you,  but  his  brother,  "  who  went  out  in  the 
country  this  morning."  They  have  always  got  a  "  brother  "  to 
shift  the  responsibility  upon.  A  victim  said  to  one  of  these  fel 
lows  one  day : 

"  But  I  know  I  hired  the  horse  of  you,  because  I  noticed 
that  scar  on  your  cheek.*' 


AN    UNWILLING    BORROWER. 


469 


The  reply  was  not  bad:  "Oh,   yes — yes — my   brother   all 
same — we  twins  !" 

A  friend  of  mine,  J.  Smith,  hired  a  horse  yesterday,  the 


MY  BROTHER — WE  TWINS. 


Kanaka  warranting  him  to  be  in  excellent  condition.  Smith 
had  a  saddle  and  blanket  of  his  own,  and  he  ordered  the  Kan 
aka  to  put  these  on  the  horse.  The  Kanaka  protested  that  he 
was  perfectly  willing  to  trust  the  gentleman  with  the  saddle 
that  wras  already  on  the  animal,  but  Smith  refused  to  use  it. 
The  change  was  made ;  then  Smith  noticed  that  the  Kanaka 
had  only  changed  the  saddles,  and  had  left  the  original  blanket 
on  the  horse ;  he  said  he  forgot  to  change  the  blankets,  and  so. 


470 


A    NEW    JOCKEY    TRICK. 


EXTRAORDINARY  CAPERS. 


to  cut  the  bother  short,  Smith  mounted  and  rode  away.  The 
horse  went  lame  a  mile  from  town,  and  afterward  got  to  cutting 
up  some  extraordinary  capers.  Smith  got  down  and  took  off 
the  saddle,  but  the  blanket  stuck  fast  to  the  horse — glued  to  a 

procession  of  raw  places. 
The  Kanaka's  mysterious 
conduct  stood  explained. 

Another  friend  of  mine 
bought  a  pretty  good  horse 
from  a  native,  a  day  or  two 
ago,  after  a  tolerably  thor 
ough  examination  of  the 
animal.  He  discovered  to 
day  that  the  horse  was  as 
blind  as  a  bat,  in  one  eye. 
He  meant  to  have  examined 
that  eye,  and  came  home 
with  a  general  notion  that  he  had  done  it ;  but  he  remem 
bers  now  that  every  time  he  made  the  attempt  his  attention 
was  called  to  something  else  by  his  victimizes 

One  more  instance,  and  then  I  will  pass  to  something  else. 
I  am  informed  that  when  a  certain  Mr.  L.,  a  visiting  stranger,  was 
here,  he  bought  a  pair  of  very  respectable-looking  match  horses 
from  a  native.  They  were  in  a  little  stable  with  a  partition 
through  the  middle  of  it — one  horse  in  each  apartment.  Mr. 
L.  examined  one  of  them  critically  through  a  window  (the 
Kanaka's  "  brother  "  having  gone  to  the  country  with  the  key), 
and  then  went  around  the  house  and  examined  the  other  through 
a  window  on  the  other  side.  He  said  it  was  the  neatest  match 
he  had  ever  seen,  and  paid  for  the  horses  on  the  spot.  Where 
upon  the  Kanaka  departed  to  join  his  brother  in  tho  country. 
The  fellow  had  shamefully  swindled  L.  There  was  only  one 
"  match  "  horse,  and  he  had  examined  his  starboard  side  through 
one  window  and  his  port  side  through  another !  I  decline  to 
believe  this  story,  but  I  give  it  because  it  is  worth  something 
as  a  fanciful  illustration  of  a  fixed  fact — namely,  that  the  Kan- 


SANDWICH  ISLAND  HAY  MERCHANT. 


•m 


aka  horse-jockey  is  fertile  in  invention  and  elastic  in  conscience. 
You  can  buy  a  pretty  good  horse  for  forty  or  fifty  dollars, 
and  a  good  enough  horse  for  all  practical  purposes  for  two  dol 
lars  and  a  half.  I  estimate  "  Oahu"  to  be  worth  somewhere  in 
the  neighborhood  of  thirty-five  cents.  A  good  deal  better  animal 
than  he  is  was  sold  here  day  before  yesterday  for  a  dollar  and  sev 
enty-five  cents,  and  sold  again  to-day  for  two  dollars  and  twenty- 
five  cents ;  Williams  bought  a  handsome  and  lively  little  pony  yes 
terday  for  ten  dollars ;  and  about  the  best  common  horse  on  the 
island  (and  he  is  a  really  good  one)  sold  yesterday,  with  Mexican 
saddle  and  bridle,  for  seventy  dollars — a  horse  which  is  well  and 
widely  known,  and  greatly  respected  for  his  speed,  good  disposi- 


A  LOAD  OF   HAY. 


tion  and  everlasting  bottom.  You  give  your  horse  a  little  grain 
once  a  day ;  it  comes  from  San  Francisco,  and  is  worth  about 
two  cents  a  pound ;  and  you  give  him  as  much  hay  as  he  wants  ;  it 
is  cut  and  brought  to  the  market  by  natives,  and  is  not  very  good 
it  is  haled  into  long,  round  bundles,  about  the  size  of  a  largo 


472  GOOD    COUNTRY    FOR    HORSE    LOVERS. 

man ;  one  of  them  is  stuck  by  the  middle  on  each  end  of  a  six* 
foot  pole,  and  the  Kanaka  shoulders  the  pole  and  walks  about 
the  streets  between  the  upright  bales  in  search  of  customers. 
These  hay  bales,  thus  carried,  have  a  general  resemblance  to  a 
colossal  capital  H. 

The  hay-bundles  cost  twenty-five  cents  apiece,  and  one  will 
last  a  horse  about  a  day.  You  can  get  a  horse  for  a  song,  a 
week's  hay  for  another  song,  and  you  can  turn  your  animal  loose 
among  the  luxuriant  grass  in  your  neighbor's  broad  front  yard 
without  a  song  at  all — you  do  it  at  midnight,  and  stable  the 
beast  again  before  morning.  You  have  been  at  no  expense  thus 
far,  but  when  you  come  to  buy  a  saddle  and  bridle  they  will  cost 
you  from  twenty  to  thirty-five  dollars.  You  can  hire  a  horse, 
saddle  and  bridle  at  from  seven  to  ten  dollars  a  week,  and  the 
owner  will  take  care  of  them  at  his  own  expense. 

It  is  time  to  close  this  day's  record — bed  time.    As  I  prepare 
for  sleep,  a  rich  voice  rises  out  of  the  still  night,  and,  far  as  this 
ocean  rock  is  toward  the  ends  of  the  earth,  I  recognize  a  famil 
iar  home  air.     But  the  words  seem  somewhat  out  of  joint : 
"  Waikiki  lantoni  oe  Kaa  booty  hooly  wawhoo." 

Translated,  that  means  "  When  we  were  marching  through 
Georgia." 


CHAPTER  LXYI. 

PASSING  through  the  market  place  we  saw  that  feature  of 
Honolulu  under  its  most  favorable  auspices — that  is,  in 
the  full  glory  of  Saturday  afternoon,  which  is  a  festive  day 
with  the  natives.  The  native  girls  by  twos  and  threes  and 
parties  of  a  dozen,  and  sometimes  in  whole  platoons  and  com 
panies,  went  cantering  up  and  down  the  neighboring  streets 
astride  of  fleet  but  homely  horses,  and  with  their  guady  riding 
habits  streaming  like  banners  behind  them.  Such  a  troop  of 
free  and  easy  riders,  in  their  natural  home,  the  saddle,  makes 
a  gay  and  graceful  spectacle.  The  riding  habit  I  speak  of  is 
simply  a  long,  broad  scarf,  like  a  tavern  table  cloth  brilliantly 
colored,  wrapped  around  the  loins  once,  then  apparently  passed 
between  the  limbs  and  each  end  thrown  backward  over  the 
same,  and  floating  and  flapping  behind  on  both  sides  beyond 
the  horse's  tail  like  a  couple  of  fancy  flags  ;  then,  slipping  the 
stirrup-irons  between  her  toes,  the  girl  throws  her  sliest  for 
ward,  sits  up  like  a  Major  General  and  goes  sweeping  by  like 
the  wind. 

The  girls  put  on  all  the  finery  they  can  on  Saturday  afternoon 
—fine  black  silk  robes ;  flowing  red  ones  that  nearly  put  your 
eyes  out ;  others  as  white  as  snow ;  still  others  that  discount 
the  rainbow ;  and  they  wear  their  hair  in  nets,  and  trim  their 
jaunty  hats  with  fresh  flowers,  and  encircle  their  dusky  throats 
with  home-made  necklaces  of  the  brilliant  vermillion-tinted 
blossom  of  the  ohia ;  and  they  fill  the  markets  and  the  adjacent 
streets  with  their  bright  presences,  and  smell  like  a  rag  factory 
on  fire  with  their  offensive  cocoanut  oil. 


474: 


SIGHTS    ON    THE    ISLANDS. 


Occasionally  you  see  a  heathen  from  the  sunny  isles  away 
down  in  the  South  Seas,  with  his  face  and  neck  tatooed  till  he 
looks  like  the  customary  mendicant  from  Washoe  who  has  been 
blown  up  in  a  mine.  Some  are  tattooed  a  dead  blue  color  down 
to  the  upper  lip — masked,  as  it  were — leaving  the  natural  light 
yellow  skin  of  Micronesia  unstained  from  thence  down ;  some 
with  broad  marks  drawn  down  from  hair  to  neck,  on  both  sides 
of  the  face,  and  a  strip  of  the  original  yellow  skin,  two  inches 


SANDWICH  ISLAND   GIRLS. 


wide,  down  the  center — a  gridiron  with  a  spoke  broken  out ; 
and  some  with  the  entire  face  discolored  with  the  popular 
mortification  tint,  relieved  only  by  one  or  two  thin,  wavy 
threads  of  natural  yellow  running  across  the  face  from  ear  to 
ear,  and  eyes  twinkling  out  of  this  darkness,  from  under  shad 
owing  hat-brims,  like  stars  in  the  dark  of  the  moon. 

Moving  among  the  stirring  crowds,  you  come  to  the  poi 
merchants,  squatting  in  the  shade  on  their  hams,  in  true  native 
fashion,  and  surrounded  by  purchasers.  (The  Sandwich  Island- 


CHIEF    ARTICLE    OF    FOOD. 


475 


ers  always  squat  on  their  hams,  and  who  knows  but  they  may 
be  the  old  original  "  ham  sandwiches  ?"  The  thought  is  preg 
nant  with  interest.)  The  poi  looks  like  common  flour  paste, 
and  is  kept  in  large  bowls  form 
ed  of  a  species  of  gourd,  and 
capable  of  holding  from  one  to 
three  or  four  gallons.  Poi  is 
the  chief  arti  le  of  food  among 
the  natives,  and  is  prepared 
from  the  taro  plant.  The  taro 
root  looks  like  a  thick,  or,  if  you 
please,  a  corpulent  sweet  potato, 
in  shape,  but  is  of  a  light  purple 
color  when  boiled.  When  boil 
ed  it  answers  as  a  passable  sub 
stitute  for  bread.  The  buck 
Kanakas  bake  it  under  ground, 
then  mash  it  up  well  with  a 
heavy  lava  pestle,  mix  water 
with  it  until  it  becomes  a  paste,  set  it  aside  and  let  it  ferment, 
and  then  it  is  poi — and  an  unseductive  mixture  it  is,  almost 
tasteless  before  it  ferments  and  too  sour  for  a  luxury  afterward. 
But  nothing  is  more  nutritious.  "When  solely  used,  however, 
it  produces  acrid  humors,  a  fact  which  sufficiently  accounts  for 
the  humorous  character  of.  the  Kanakas.  I  think  there  must 
be  as  much  of  a  knack  in  handling  poi  as  there  is  in  eating 
with  chopsticks.  The  forefinger  is  thrust  into  the  mess  and 
stirred  quickly  round  several  times  and  drawn  as  quickly  out, 
thickly  coated,  just  as  it  it  were  poulticed ;  the  head  is  thrown 
back,  the  finger  inserted  in  the  mouth  and  the  delicacy  stripped 
off  and  swallowed — the  eye  closing  gently,  meanwhile,  in  a 
languid  sort  of  ecstasy.  Many  a  different  finger  goes  into  the 
same  bowl  and  many  a  different  kind  of  dirt  and  shade  and 
quality  of  flavor  is  added  to  the  virtues  of  its  contents. 

Around  a  small  shanty  was  collected  a  crowd  of  natives  buy 
ing  the  awa  root.  It  is  said  that  but  for  the  use  of  this  root 
the  destruction  of  the  people  in  former  times  by  certain  imported 


ORIGINAL  HAM   SANDWICH. 


476  GRAND    GALA    DAY. 

diseases  would  have  been  far  greater  than  it  was,  and  by  others 
it  is  said  that  this  is  merely  a  fancy.  All  agree  that  poi  will  re 
juvenate  a  man  who  is  used  up  and  his  vitality  almost  annihilated 
by  hard  drinking,  and  that  in  some  kinds  of  diseases  it  will 
restore  health  after  all  medicines  have  failed  ;  but  all  are  not 
willing  to  allow  to  the  awa  the  virtues  claimed  for  it.  The 
natives  manufacture  an  intoxicating  drink  from  it  which  is  fear 
ful  in  its  effects  when  persistently  indulged  in.  It  covers  the 
body  with  dry,  white  scales,  inflames  the  eyes,  and  causes  pre 
mature  decrepitude.  Although  the  man  before  whose  estab 
lishment  we  stopped  has  to  pay  a  Government  license  of  eight 
hundred  dollars  a  year  for  the  exclusive  right  to  sell  awa  root, 
it  is  said  that  he  makes  a  small  fortune  every  twelve-month ; 
while  saloon  keepers,  who  pay  a  thousand  dollars  a  year  for  the 
privilege  of  retailing  whiskey,  etc.,  only  make  a  bare  living. 

We  found  the  fish  market  crowded ;  for  the  native  is  very  fond 
of  fish,  and  eats  the  article  raw  and  alive  !  Let  us  change  the 
subject. 

In  old  times  here  Saturday  was  a  grand  gala  day  indeed. 
All  the  native  population  of  the  town  forsook  their  labors,  and 
those  of  the  surrounding  country  journeyed  to  the  city.  Then 
the  white  folks  had  to  stay  indoors,  for  every  street  was  so 
packed  with  charging  cavaliers  and  cavalieresses  that  it  was 
next  to  impossible  to  thread  one's  way  through  the  cavalcades 
without  getting  crippled. 

At  night  they  feasted  and  the  girls  danced  the  lascivious  hu 
la  hula — a  dance  that  is  said  to  exhibit  the  very  perfection  of 
educated  n  \otion  of  limb  and  arm,  hand,  head  and  body,  and 
the  exactest  uniformity  of  movement  and  accuracy  of  "  time." 
It  was  performed  by  a  circle  of  girls  with  no  raiment  on  them 
to  speak  of,  who  went  through  an  infinite  variety  of  motions 
and  figures  without  prompting,  and  yet  so  true  was  their  "  time," 
and  in  such  perfect  concert  did  they  move  that  when  they  were 
placed  in  a  straight  line,  hands,  arms,  bodies,  limbs  and  heads 
waved,  swayed,  gesticulated,  bowed,  stooped,  whirled,  squirmed, 
twisted  and  undulated  as  if  they  were  part  and  parcel  of  a  single 
individual ;  and  it  was  difficult  to  believe  they  were  not  moved 
in  a  body  by  some  exquisite  piece  of  mechanism. 


UNIVERSAL    CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP.  477 

Of  late  years,  however,  Saturday  has  lost  most  of  its  quondam 
gala  features.  This  weekly  stampede  of  the  natives  interfered 
too  much  with  labor  and  the  interests  of  the  white  folks,  and 
by  sticking  in  a  law  here,  and  preaching  a  sermon  there,  and 
by  various  other  means,  they  gradually  broke  it  up.  The  de 
moralizing  hula  hula  was  forbidden  to  be  performed,  save  at 
night,  with  closed  doors,  in  presence  of  few  spectators,  and  only 
by  permission  duly  procured  from  the  authorities  and  the  pay 
ment  of  ten  dollars  for  the  same.  There  are  few  girls  now-a- 
days  able  to  dance  this  ancient  national  dance  in  the  highest 
perfection  of  the  art. 

The  missionaries  have  christianized  and  educated  all  the  na 
tives.  They  all  belong  to  the  Church,  and  there  is  not  one  of 
them,  above  the  age  of  eight  years,  but  can  read  and  write 
with  facility  in  the  native  tongue.  It  is  the  most  universally 
educated  race  of  people  outside  of  China.  They  have  any 
quantity  of  books,  printed  in  the  Kanaka  language,  and  all  the 
natives  are  fond  of  reading.  They  are  inveterate  church-goers 
— nothing  can  keep  them  away.  All  this  ameliorating  culti 
vation  has  at  last  built  up  in  the  native  women  a  profound 
respect  for  chastity — in  other  people.  Perhaps  that  is  enough 
to  say  on  that  head.  The  national  sin  will  die  out  when  the 
race  does,  but  perhaps  not  earlier. — But  doubtless  this  purifying 
is  not  far  off,  when  we  reflect  that  contact  with  civilization  and 
the  whites  has  reduced  the  native  population  from  four  hund 
red  thousand  (Captain  Cook's  estimate,)  iv  fifty-five  thousand 
in  something  over  eighty  years  ! 

Society  is  a  queer  medley  in  this  notable  missionary,  whaling 
and  governmental  centre.  If  you  get  into  conversation  with 
a  stranger  and  experience  that  natural  desire  to  know  what  sort 
of  ground  you  are  treading  on  by  finding  out  what  manner  of 
man  your  stranger  is,  strike  out  boldly  and  address  him  as 
"  Captain."  Watch  him  narrowly,  and  if  you  see  by  his  coun 
tenance  that  you  are  on  the  wrong  tack,  ask  him  where  he 
preaches.  It  is  a  safe  bet  that  he  is  either  a  missionary  or 
captain  of  a  whaler.  I  am  now  personally  acquainted  with 
seventy-two  captains  and  ninety-six  missionaries.  The  captains 


478  CATS    AND    OFFICIALS. 

and  ministers  form  one-half  of  the  population  ;  the  third  fourth 
is  composed  of  common  Kanakas  and  mercantile  foreigners 
and  their  families,  and  the  final  fourth  is  made  up  of  high  offi 
cers  of  the  Hawaiian  Government.  And  there  are  just  about 
cats  enough  for  three  apiece  all  around. 

A  solen^i  stranger  met  me  in  the  suburbs  the  other  day,  and 
said : 

"  Good  morning,  your  reverence.  Preach  in  the  stone 
church  yonder,  no  doubt?" 

"  ~No,  I  don't.     I'm  not  a  preacher." 

"  Really,  I  beg  your  pardon,  Captain.  I  trust  you  had  a 
good  season.  How  much  oil  "- 

"  Oil  1     What  do  you  take  me  for  ?     I'm  not  a  whaler." 

"  Oh,  I  beg  a  thousand  pardons,  your  Excellency.  Major 
General  in  the  household  troops,  no  doubt  ?  Minister  of  the 


"I  KISSED  HIM  FOR  HIS  MOTHER." 

Interior,  likely  ?     Secretary  of  war  ?     First  Gentleman  of  tne 
Bed-chamber  ?     Commissioner  of  the  Royal  "• 

"Stuff!     I'm  no  official.     I'm  not  connected  in  any  way 
with  the  Government." 


AN    OVERWHELMING    DISCOVERY. 


479 


"Bless  my  life!  Then,  who  the  mischief  are  you?  what 
the  mischief  are  you  ?  and  how  the  mischief  did  you  get  here, 
and  where  in  thunder  did  you  come  from?" 

"  I'm  only  a  private  personage — an  unassuming  stranger— 
lately  arrived  from  America." 

"  No  ?  Not  a  missionary  !  Not  a  whaler  !  not  a  member 
of  his  Majesty's  Government !  not  even  Secretary  of  the  Navy ! 
Ah,  Heaven !  it  is  too  blissful  to  be  true;  alas,  I  do  but  dream. 
And  yet  that  noble,  honest  countenance — those  oblique,  ingenv 
uous  eyes — that  massive  head,  incapable  of — of — anything  ; 
your  hand ;  give  me  your  hand,  bright  waif.  Excuse  these 
tears.  For  sixteen  weary  years  I  have  yearned  for  a  moment 
like  this,  and  "- 

Here  his  feelings  were  too  much  for  him,  and  he  swooned 
away.  I  pitied  this  poor  creature  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart. 
I  was  deeply  moved.  I  shed  a  few  tears  on  him  and  kissed 
him  for  his  mother.  I  then  took  what  small  change  he  had 
and  "  shoved." 


CHAPTER  LXYII. 

I  STILL  quote  from  my  journal : 
I  found  the  national  Legislature  to  consist  of  half  a  dozen 
white  men  and  some  thirty  or  forty  natives.  It  was  a  dark 
assemblage.  The  nobles  and  Ministers  (about  a  dozen  of  them 
altogether)  occupied  the  extreme  left  of  the  hall,  with  David 
Kalakaua  (the  King's  Chamberlain)  and  Prince  William  at  the 
head.  The  President  of  the  Assembly,  His  Royal  Highness 
M.  Kekuanaoa,*  and  the  Yice  President  (the  latter  a  white  man,) 
sat  in  the  pulpit,  if  I  may  so  term  it. 

The  President  is  the  King's  father.  He  is  an  erect,  strongly 
built,  massive  featured,  white-haired,  tawny  old  gentleman  of 
eighty  years  of  age  or  thereabouts.  He  was  simply  but  well 
dressed,  in  a  blue  cloth  coat  and  white  vest,  and  white  panta 
loons,  without  spot,  dust  or  blemish  upon  them.  He  bears 
himself  with  a  calm,  stately  dignity,  and  is  a  man  of  noble 
presence.  He  was  a  young  man  and  a  distinguished  warrior 
under  that  terrific  fighter,  Kamehameha  I.,  more  than  half  a 
century  ago.  A  knowledge  of  his  career  suggested  some  such 
thought  as  this :  "  This  man,  naked  as  the  day  he  was  born, 
and  war-club  and  spear  in  hand,  has  charged  at  the  head  of  a 
horde  of  savages  against  other  hordes  of  savages  more  than  a 
generation  and  a  half  ago,  and  reveled  in  slaughter  and  carnage ; 
has  worshipped  wooden  images  on  his  devout  knees ;  has  seen 
hundreds  of  his  race  offered  up  in  heathen  temples  as  sacrifices 

*Since  dead. 


PRAYERS    FOR    AN    ENEMY.  481 

to  wooden  idols,  at  a  time  when  no  missionary's  foot  had  ever 
pressed  this  soil,  and  he  had  never  heard  of  the  white  man's 
God  ;  has  believed  his  enemy  could  secretly  pray  him  to  death ; 
has  seen  the  day,  in  his  childhood,  when  it  was  a  crime  pun 
ishable  by  death  for  a  man  to  eat  with  his  wife,  or  for  a  plebeian 
to  let  his  shadow  fall  upon  the  King — and  now  look  at  him  ;  an 
educated  Christian ;  neatly  and  handsomely  dressed ;  a  high- 
minded,  elegant  gentleman ;  a  traveler,  in  some  degree,  and  one 
who  has  been  the  honored  guest  of  royalty  in  Europe ;  a  man 
practiced  in  holding  the  reins  of  an  enlightened  government, 
and  well  versed  in  the  politics  of  his  country  and  in  general, 
practical  information.  Look  at  him,  sitting  there  presiding 
over  the  deliberations  of  a  legislative  body,  among  whom  are 
white  men — a  grave,  dignified,  statesmanlike  personage,  and  as 
seemingly  natural  and  fitted  to  the  place  as  if  he  had  been 
born  in  it  and  had  never  been  out  of  it  in  his  life  time.  How 
the  experiences  of  this  old  man's  eventful  life  shame  the  cheap 
inventions  of  romance !" 

Kekuanaoa  is  not  of  the  blood  royal.  He  derives  his  princely 
rank  from  his  wife,  who  was  a  daughter  of  Kamehameha  the 
Great.  Under  other  monarchies  the  male  line  takes  precedence 
of  the  female  in  tracing  genealogies,  but  here  the  opposite  is 
the  case — the  female  line  takes  precedence.  Their  reason  for 
this  is  exceedingly  sensible,  and  I  recommend  it  to  the  aristocracy 
of  Europe :  They  say  it  is  easy  to  know  who  a  man's  mother 
was,  but,  etc.,  etc. 

The  christianizing  of  the  natives  has  hardly  even  weakened 
some  of  their  barbarian  superstitions,  much  less  destroyed  them. 
I  have  just  referred  to  one  of  these.  It  is  still  a  popular  belief 
that  if  your  enemy  can  get  hold  of  any  article  belonging  to 
you  he  can  get  down  on  his  knees  over  it  and  pray  you  to  death. 
Therefore  many  a  native  gives  up  and  dies  merely  because  he 
imagines  that  some  enemy  is  putting  him  through  a  course  of 
damaging  prayer.  This  praying  an  individual  to  death  seems 
absurd  enough  at  a  first  glance,  but  then  when  we  call  to  mind 
31t 


482    WOMEN'S    RIGHTS    AND    ROMANTIC    FASHIONS. 


some  of  the  pulpit  efforts  of  certain  of  our  own  ministers  the 
thing  looks  plausible. 

In  former  times,  among  the  Islanders,  not  only  a  plurality 
of  wives  was  customary,  but  a  plurality  of  husbands  likewise. 
Some  native  women  of  noble  rank  had  as  many  as  six  husbands. 
A  woman  thus  supplied  did  not  reside  with  all  her  husbands  at 
once,  but  lived  several  months  with  each  in  turn.  An  under 
stood  sign  hung  at  her  door 
during  these  months.  When 
the  sign  was  taken  down, 
it  meant  "  NEXT." 

In  those  days  woman  was 
rigidly  taught  to  "know 
her  place."  Her  place  was 
to  do  all  the  work,  take  all 
the  cuffs,  provide  all  the 
food,  and  content  herself 
with  what  was  left  after  her 
lord  had  finished  his  din 
ner.  She  was  not  only  for 
bidden,  by  ancient  law,  and 
under  penalty  of  death,  to  eat  with  her  husband  or  enter  a  ca 
noe,  but  was  debarred,  under  the  same  penalty,  from  eating 
bananas,  pine-apples,  oranges  and  other  choice  fruits  at  any 
time  or  in  any  place.  She  had  to  confine  herself  pretty  strictly 
to  "  poi  "  and  hard  work.  These  poor  ignorant  heathen  seem 
to  have  had  a  sort  of  groping  idea  of  what  came  of  woman  eat 
ing  fruit  in  the  garden  of  Eden,  and  they  did  not  choose  to 
take  any  more  chances.  But  the  missionaries  broke  up  this 
satisfactory  arrangement  of  things.  They  liberated  woman  and 
made  her  the  equal  of  man. 

The  natives  had  a  romantic  fashion  of  burying  some  of  their 
children  alive  when  the  family  became  larger  than  necessary. 
The  missionaries  interfered  in  this  matter  too,  and  stopped  it. 

To  this  day  the  natives  are  able  to  lie  down  and  die  when 
ever  they  want  to,  whether  there  is  anything  the  matter  witk 


AN  ENEMY'S  PLATER. 


THE    SHORN    IDOL.  483 

them  or  not.  If  a  Kanaka  takes  a  notion  to  die,  that  is  the 
end  of  him  ;  nobody  can  persuade  him  to  hold  on  ;  all  the  doc 
tors  in  the  world  could  not  save  him. 

A  luxury  which  they  enjoy  more  than  anything  else,  is  a 
large  funeral.  If  a  person  wants  to  get  rid  of  a  troublesome 
native,  it  is  only  necessary  to  promise  him  a  fine  funeral  and 
name  the  hour  and  he  will  be  on  hand  to  the  minute — at  least 
his  remains  will. 

All  the  natives  are  Christians,  now,  but  many  of  them  still 
desert  to  the  Great  Shark  God  for  temporary  succor  in  time 
of  trouble.  An  irruption  of  the  great  volcano  of  Kilauea,  or 
an  earthquake,  always  brings  a  deal  of  latent  loyalty  to  the 
Great  Shark  God  to  the  surface.  It  is  common  report  that  the 
King,  educated,  cultivated  and  refined  Christian  gentleman  as 
he  undoubtedly  is,  still  turns  to  the  idols  of  his  fathers  for  help 
when  disaster  threatens.  A  planter  caught  a  shark,  and  one 
of  his  christianized  natives  testified  his  emancipation  from  the 
thrall  of  ancient  superstition  by  assisting  to  dissect  the  shark 
after  a  fashion  forbidden  by  his  abandoned  creed.  But  remorse 
shortly  began  to  torture  him.  He  grew  moody  and  sought 
solitude  ;  brooded  over  his  sin,  refused  food,  and  finally  said  he 
must  die  and  ought  to  die,  for  he  had  sinned  against  the  Great 
Shark  God  and  could  never  know  peace  any  more.  He  was 
proof  against  persuasion  and  ridicule,  and  in  the  course  of  a 
day  or  two  took  to  his  bed  and  died,  although  he  showed  no 
symptom  of  disease.  His  young  daughter  followed  his  lead 
and  suffered  a  like  fate  within  the  week.  Superstition  is  in 
grained  in  the  native  blood  and  bone  and  it  is  only  natural 
that  it  should  crop  out  in  time  of  distress.  Wherever  one  goes 
in  the  Islands,  he  will  find  small  piles  of  stones  by  the  wayside, 
covered  with  leafy  offerings,  placed  there  by  the  natives  to  ap 
pease  evil  spirits  or  honor  local  deities  belonging  to  the  my 
thology  of  former  days. 

In  the  rural  districts  of  any  of  the  Islands,  the  traveler  hourly 
comes  upon  parties  of  dusky  maidens  bathing  in  the  streams 
or  in  the  sea  without  any  clothing  on  and  exhibiting  no  very 


484 


THE    DESIRE    FOR    DRESS    AWAKENED. 


intemperate  zeal  in  the  matter  of  hiding  their  nakedness.  "When 
the  missionaries  first  took  up  their  residence  in  Honolulu,  the 
native  women  would  pay  their  families  frequent  friendly  visits, 
day  by  day,  not  even  clothed  with  a  blush.  It  was  found  a 
hard  matter  to  convince  them  that  this  was  rather  indelicate. 
Finally  the  missionaries  provided  them  with  long,  loose  calico 
robes,  and  that  ended  the  difficulty — for  the  women  would 
troop  through  the  town,  stark  naked,  with  their  robes  folded 
under  their  arms,  march  to  the  missionary  houses  and  then 


VISITING  THE  MISSTC  NAKIE1. 


proceed  to  dress ! — The  natives  soon  manifested  a  strong  pro 
clivity  for  clothing,  but  it  was  shortly  apparent  that  they  only 
wanted  it  for  grandeur.  The  missionaries  imported  a  quantity 
of  hats,  bonnets,  and  other  male  and  female  wearing  apparel, 
instituted  a  general  distribution,  and  begged  the  people  not  to 
come  to  church  naked,  next  Sunday,  as  usual.  And  they  did 
not;  but  the  national  spirit  of  unselfishness  led  them  to  divide 
up  with  neighbors  who  were  not  at  the  distribution,  and  next 
Sabbath  the  poor  preachers  could  hardly  keep  countenance  be 
fore  their  vast  congregations.  In  the  midst  of  the  reading  of 


FULL    DPwESS— NOT    PARIS    STYLE. 


4S5 


a  lijmn  a  brown,  stately  dame  would  sweep  up  the  aisle  with 
a  world  of  airs,  with  nothing  in  the  world  on  but  a  "  stovepipe  " 
hat  and  a  pair  of  cheap  gloves ;  another  dame  would  follow? 
tricked  out  in  a  man's  shirt,  and  nothing  else ;  another  one 
would  enter  with  a  flourish,  with  simply  the  sleeves  of  a  bright 
calico  dress  tied  around  her  waist  and  the  rest  of  the  garment 
dragging  behind  like  a  peacock's  tail  off  duty  ;  a  stately  "  buck" 
Kanaka  would  stalk  iri  with  a  woman's  bonnet  on,  wrong  side 
before — only  this,  and  nothing  more  ;  after  him  would  stride 
his  fellow,  with  the  legs  of  a  pair  of  pantaloons  tied  around  his 
neck,  the  rest  of  his  person  untrammeled ;  in  his  rear  would 
come  another  gentleman  simply  gotten  up  in  a  fiery  neck-tie 
and  a  striped  vest.  The  poor  creatures  were  beaming  with 


FULL  CUUIiCII  DRZSS. 


Complacency  and  wholly  unconscious  of  any  absurdity  in  their 
ippearance.  They  gazed  at  each  other  with  happy  admiration, 
and  it  was  plain  to  see  that  the  young  girls  were  taking  note 
of  what  each  other  had  on,  as  naturally  as  if  they  had  always 
lived  in  a  land  of  Bibles  and  knew  what  churches  were  made 


486 


A    GAME    OF    EMPIRE. 


for ;  here  was  the  evidence  of  a  dawning  civilization.  The 
spectacle  which  the  congregation  presented  was  so  extraordi 
nary  and  withal  so  moving,  that  the  missionaries  found  it  dif 
ficult  to  keep  to  the  text  and  go  on  with  the  services ;  and  by 
and  by  when  the  simple  children  of  the  sun  began  a  general 
swapping  of  garments  in  open  meeting  and  produced  some 
irresistibly  grotesque  effects  in  the  course  of  re-dressing,  there 
was  nothing  for  it  but  to  cut  the  thing  short  with  the  benedic 
tion  and  dismiss  the  fantastic  assemblage. 

In  our  country,  children  play  "  keep  house  ;"  and  in  the  same 
high-sounding  but  miniature  way  the  grown  folk  here,  with 
the  poor  little  material  of  slender  territory  and  meagre  popu 
lation,  play  "  empire."  There  is  his  royal  Majesty  the  King, 
with  a  New  York  detective's  income  of  thirty  or  thirty-five 
thousand  dollars  a  year  from  the  "  royal  civil  list "  and  the 
"  royal  domain."  He  lives  in  a  two-story  frame  "  palace." 
And  there  is  the  "  royal  family  " — the  customary  hive  of 

royal  brothers,  sisters,  cous- 

11BE  HHHIK1    ins   and  other  noble  drones 

and  vagrants  usual  to  mon 
archy, — all  with  a  spoon  in 
the  national  pap-dish,  and 
all  bearing;  such  titles  as  his 

O 

or  her  Royal  Highness  the 
Prince  or  Princess  So-and-so. 
Few  of  them  can  carry  their 
royal   splendors  far  enough 
to  ride  in  carriages,  however ; 
they   sport    the   economical 
Kanaka  horse  or  "  hoof  it  "* 
with  the  plebeians. 
Then  there  is  his  Excellency  the  "royal  Chamberlain" — a 
sinecure,  for  his  majesty  dresses  himself  with  his  own  hands, 
except  when  he  is  ruralizing  at  Waikiki  and  then  he  requires 
no  dressing. 

Next  we  have  his  Excellency  the  Commander-in-chief  of  the 


PLAYING 


*Missionary  phrase. 


ROYAL  OFFICERS  AND  SALARIES.       487 

Household  Troops,  whose  forces  consist  of  about  the  number 
of  soldiers  usually  placed  under  a  corporal  in  other  lands. 

Next  comes  the  royal  Steward  and  the  Grand  Equerry  in 
Waiting — high  dignitaries  with  modest  salaries  and  little  to  do. 

Then  we  have  his  Excellency  the  First  Gentleman  of  the 
Bed-chamber — an  office  as  easy  as  it  is  magnificent. 

Next  we  come  to  his  Excellency  the  Prime  Minister,  a  ren 
egade  American  from  New  Hampshire,  all  jaw,  vanity,  bom 
bast  and  ignorance,  a  lawyer  of  "  shyster*'  calibre,  a  fraud  by 
nature,  a  humble  worshiper  of  the  sceptre  above  him,  a  reptile 
never  tired  of  sneering  at  the  land  of  his  birth  or  glorifying 
the  ten-acre  kingdom  that  has  adopted  him — salary,  $4,000  a 
year,  vast  consequence,  and  no  perquisites. 

Then  we  have  his  Excellency  the  Imperial  Minister  of  Fi 
nance,  who  handles  a  million  dollars  of  public  money  a  year, 
sends  in  his  annual  "  budget "  with  great  ceremony,  talks  pro 
digiously  of  "  finance,"  suggests  imposing  schemes  for  paying 
off  the  "  national  debt "  (of  $150,000,)  and  does  it  all  for  $4,000 
a  year  and  unimaginable  glory. 

Next  we  have  his  Excellency  the  Minister  of  War,  who 
holds  sway  over  the  royal  armies — they  consist  of  two  hundred 
and  thirty  uniformed  Kanakas,  mostly  Brigadier  Generals,  and 
if  the  country  ever  gets  into  trouble  with  a  foreign  power  we 
shall  probably  hear  from  them.  I  knew  an  American  whose 
copper-plate  visiting  card  bore  this  impressive  legend :  "  Lieu 
tenant-Colonel  in  the  Royal  Infantry.  To  say  that  he  was 
proud  of  this  distinction  is  stating  it  but  tamely.  The  Minister 
of  War  has  also  in  his  charge  some  venerable  swivels  on  Punch- 
Bowl  Hill  wherewith  royal  salutes  are  fired  when  foreign  ves 
sels  of  war  enter  the  port. 

Next  comes  his  Excellency  the  Minister  of  the  Navy — a 
nabob  who  rules  the  "  royal  fleet,"  (a  steam-tug  and  a  sixty-ton 
schooner.) 

And  next  comes  his  Grace  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Honolulu, 
the  chief  dignitary  of  the  "  Established  Church  " — for  when 
the  American  Presbyterian  missionaries  had  completed  the 


483 


FOREIGN    AMBASSADORS. 


reduction  of  the  nation  to  a  compact  condition  of  Christianity, 
native  royalty  stepped  in  and  erected  the  grand  dignity  of  an 
"Established  (Episcopal)  Church"  over  it,  and  imported  a 
cheap  ready-made  Bishop  from  England  to  take  charge.  The 
chagrin  of  the  missionaries  has  never  been  comprehensively 
expressed,  to  this  day,  profanity  not  being  admissible. 

Next  conies  his  Excellency  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruc 
tion. 

Next,  their  Excellencies  the  Governors  of  Oahu,  Hawaii, 
etc.,  and  after  them  a  string  of  High  Sheriffs  and  other  small 
fry  too  numerous  for  computation. 

Then  there  are  their  Excellencies  the  Envoy  Extraordinary 
and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  of  his  Imperial  Majesty  the  Em- 


KOYALTY    AND    ITS   SATELLITES. 


peror  of  the  French  ;  her  British  Majesty's  Minister ;  the  Min 
ister  Resident,  of  the  United  States ;  and  some  six  or  eight 
representatives  of  other  foreign  nations,  all  with  sounding  titles, 
imposing  dignity  and  prodigious  but  economical  state. 


OVERWHELMING    MAGNIFICENCE.  489 

Imagine  all  this  grandeur  in  a  play-house  "  kingdom  "  whose 
population  falls  absolutely  short  of  sixty  thousand  souls  ! 

The  people  are  so  accustomed  to  nine-jointed  titles  and  colos 
sal  magnates  that  a  foreign  prince  makes  very  little  more  stir 
in  Honolulu  than  a  Western  Congressman  does  in  New  York. 

And  let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  there  is  a  strictly  defined 
"  court  costume "  of  so  "  stunning "  a  nature  that  it  would 
make  the  clown  in  a  circus  look  tame  and  commonplace  by 
comparison  ;  and  each  Hawaiian  official  dignitary  has  a  gorgeous 
vari-colored,  gold-laced  uniform  peculiar  to  his  office — no  two 
of  them  are  alike,  and  it  is  hard  to  tell  which  one  is  the  "  loud 
est."  The  King  had  a  "  drawing-room "  at  stated  intervals, 
like  other  monarehs,  and  when  these  varied  uniforms  congre 
gate  there  weak-eyed  people  have  to  contemplate  the  spectacle 
through  smoked  glass.  Is  there  not  a  gratifying  contrast  be 
tween  this  latter-day  exhibition  and  the  one  the  ancestors  of 
some  of  these  magnates  afforded  the  missionaries  the  Sunday 
after  the  old-time  distribution  of  clothing?  Behold  what  reli 
gion  and  civilization  have  wrought ! 


CHAPTER   LXYIIL 

"\TTHILE  I  was  in  Honolulu  I  witnessed  the  ceremonious 
T  T  funeral  of  the  King's  sister,  her  Royal  Highness  the 
Princess  Victoria.  According  to  the  royal  custom,  the  remains 
had  lain  in  state  at  the  palace  thirty  days,  watched  day  and 
night  by  a  guard  of  honor.  And  during  all  that  time  a  great 
multitude  of  natives  from  the  several  islands  had  kept  the  pal 
ace  grounds  well  crowded  and  had  made  the  place  a  pandemo 
nium  every  night  with  their  howlings  and  wailings,  beating  of 
tom-toms  and  dancing  of  the  (at  other  times)  forbidden  "  hula- 
hula"  by  half-clad  maidens  to  the  music  of  songs  of  question 
able  decency  chanted  in  honor  of  the  deceased.  The  printed 
programme  of  the  funeral  procession  interested  me  at  the 
time ;  and  after  what  I  have  just  said  of  Hawaiian  grandilo 
quence  in  the  matter  of  "playing  empire,"  I  am  persuaded 
that  a  perusal  of  it  may  interest  the  reader : 

After  reading  the  long  list  of  dignitaries,  etc.,  and  remembering  the  sparseness 
of  the  population,  one  is  almost  inclined  to  wonder  where  the  material  for  that 
portion  of  the  procession  devoted  to  "  Hawaiian  Population  Generally  "  is  going 
to  be  procured : 

Undertaker. 

Royal  School.     Kawaiahao  School.     Roman  Catholic  School.     Miaemae  School. 
Honolulu  Fire  Department. 
Mechanics'  Benefit  Union. 

Attending  Physicians. 

Knonohikis  (Superintendents)  of  the  Crown  Lands,  Konohikis  of  the  Private  Lands 
of  His  Majesty  Konohikis  of  Private  Lands  of  Her  late  Royal  Highness. 


FUNERAL    PROCESSION.  4:91 

Governor  of  Oaliu  and  Staff. 
Ilulumanu  (Military  Company). 

Household  Troops. 
The  Prince  of  Hawaii's  Own  (Military  Company). 

The  King's  household  servants. 
Servants  of  Her  late  Royal  Highness. 

Protestant  Clergy.     The  Clergy  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
His  Lordship  Louis  Maigret,  The  Right  Rev.  Bishop  of  Arathea,  Vicar-Apostolic 

of  the  Hawaiian  Islands. 

The  Clergy  of  the  Hawaiian  Reformed  Catholic  Church. 
His  Lordship  the  Right  Rev.  Bishop  of  Honolulu. 


6  |  -|  oo  gj  jf  I*  Z 


[HEARSE.] 


. 

J*    £f  "S  ~  c    s-  ^  3 

*  J  J  fi  *  f  F  £ 

*  i 

H  ^ 


Her  Majesty  Queen  Emma's  Carriage. 

His  Majesty's  Staff. 

Carriage  of  Her  late  Royal  Highness. 

Carriage  of  Her  Majesty  the  Queen  Dowager. 

The  King's  Chancellor. 

Cabinet  Ministers. 
His  Excellency  the  Minister  Resident  of  the  United  States. 

H.  I.  M's  Commissioner. 

H.  B.  M's  Acting  Commissioner. 

Judges  of  Supreme  Court. 

Privy  Councillors. 

Members  of  Legislative  Assembly. 

Consular  Corps. 

Circuit  Judges. 

Clerks  of  Government  Departments. 

Members  of  the  Bar. 

Collector  General,  Custom-house  Officers  and  Officers  of  the  Customs. 

Marshal  and  Sheriffs  of  the  different  Islands. 

King's  Yeomanry. 

Foreign   Residents. 

Ahahui  Kaahumanu. 

Hawaiian  Population  Generally. 

Hawaiian  Cavalry. 

Police  Force. 

*Ranks  of  long-handled  mops  made  of  gaudy  feathers  —  sacred  to  royalty-     They 
are  stuck  in  the  ground  around  the  tomb  and  left  there. 


492 


POMP    AT    TIIE    TOMB. 


I  resume  my  journal  at  the  point  where  the  procession 
arrived  at  the  royal  mausoleum  : 

As  the  procession  filed  through  the  gate,  the  military  deployed  handsomely  to 
the  right  and  left  and  formed  an  avenue  through  which  the  long  column  of 
mourners  passed  to  the  tomb.  The  coffin  was  borne  through  the  door  of  the  mau 
soleum,  followed  by  the  King  and  his  chiefs,  the  great  officers  of  the  kingdom, 
foreign  Consuls,  Embassadors  and  distinguished  guests  (Burlingame  and  General 
Van  Valkenburgh).  Several  of  the  kahilis  were  then  fastened  to  a  frame-work  in 
front  of  the  tomb,  there  to  remain  until  they  decay  and  fall  to  pieces,  or,  forestall 
ing  this,  until  another  scion  of  royalty  dies.  At  this  point  of  the  proceedings  the 
multitude  set  up  such  a  heart-broken  wailing  as  I  hope  never  to  hear  again.  The 
soldiers  fired  three  volleys  of  musketry — the  wailing  being  previously  silenced  to 


A.  MODERN  FUNERAL. 

permit  of  the  guns  being  heard.  His  Highness  Prince  William,  in  a  showy  mili 
tary  uniform  (the  "  true  prince,"  this — scion  of  the  house  over-thrown  by  the  pres 
ent  dynasty — he  was  formerly  betrothed  to  the  Princess  but  was  not  allowed  to 
marry  her),  stood  guard  and  paced  back  and  forth  within  the  door.  The  privileged 
few  who  followed  the  coffin  into  the  mausoleum  remained  sometime,  but  the  King 
soon  came  out  and  stood  in  the  door  and  near  one  side  of  it.  A  stranger  could 
have  guessed  his  rank  (although  he  was  so  simply  and  unpretentiously  dressed) 
by  the  profound  deference  paid  him  by  all  persons  in  his  vicinity  ;  by  seeing  his 
high  officers  receive  his  quiet  orders  and  suggestions  with  bowed  and  uncovered 
heads ;  and  by  observing  how  careful  those  persons  who  came  out  of  the  mauso- 


A    STRIKING    CONTRAST.  493 

leum  were  to  avoid  "  crowding  "  him  (although  there  was  room  enough  in  the  door, 
way  for  a  wagon  to  pass,  for  that  matter) ;  how  respectfully  they  edged  out  side 
ways,  scraping  their  backs  against  the  wall  and  always  presenting  a  front  view  of 
their  persons  to  his  Majesty,  and  never  putting  their  hats  on  until  they  were  well 
out  of  the  royal  presence. 

He  was  dressed  entirely  in  black — dress-coat  and  silk  hat — and  looked  rather 
democratic  in  the  midst  of  the  showy  uniforms  about  him.  On  his  breast  he  wore 
a  large  gold  star,  which  was  half  hidden  by  the  lappel  of  his  coat.  He  remained 
at  the  door  a  half  hour,  and  occasionally  gave  an  order  to  the  men  who  were  erect 
ing  the  kahilis  before  the  tomb.  He  had  the  good  taste  to  make  one  of  them  sub 
stitute  black  crape  for  the  ordinary  hempen  rope  he  was  about  to  tie  one  of  them 
to  the  frame-work  with.  Finally  he  entered  his  carriage  and  drove  away,  and  the 
populace  shortly  began  to  drop  into  his  wake.  While  he  was  in  view  there  was 
but  one  man  who  attracted  more  attention  than  himself,  and  that  was  Harris  (the 
Yankee  Prime  Minister).  This  feeble  personage  had  crape  enough  around  his  hat 
to  express  the  grief  of  an  entire  nation,  and  as  usual  he  neglected  no  opportunity 
of  making  himself  conspicuous  and  exciting  the  admiration  of  the  simple  Kanakas. 
Oh  !  noble  ambition  of  this  modern  Richelieu  ! 

It  is  interesting  to  contrast  the  funeral  ceremonies  of  the 
Princess  Victoria  with,  those  of  her  noted  ancestor  Kameha- 
nieha  the  Conqueror,  who  died  fifty  years  ago — in  1819,  the 
year  before  the  first  missionaries  came. 

"On  the  8th  of  May,  1819,  at  the  age  of  sixty-six,  he  died,  as  he  had  lived,  In 
the  faith  of  his  country.  It  was  his  misfortune  not  to  have  come  in  contact 
with  men  who  could  have  rightly  influenced  his  religious  aspirations.  Judged  by 
his  advantages  and  compared  with  the  most  eminent  of  his  countrymen  he  may  be 
justly  styled  not  only  great,  but  good.  To  this  day  his  memory  warms  the  heart  and 
elevates  the  national  feelings  of  Hawaiians.  They  are  proud  of  their  old  warrior 
King;  they  love  his  name;  his  deeds  form  their  historical  age;  and  an  enthusiasm 
everywhere  prevails,  shared  even  by  foreigners  who  knew  his  worth,  that  consti 
tutes  the  firmest  pillar  of  the  throne  of  his  dynasty. 

"  In  lieu  of  human  victims  (the  custom  of  that  age),  a  sacrifice  of  three  hundred 
dogs  attended  his  obsequies — no  mean  holocaust  when  their  national  value  and 
the  estimation  in  which  they  were  held  are  considered.  The  bones  of  Kameha- 
meha,  after  being  kept  for  a  while,  were  so  carefully  concealed  that  all  knowledge 
of  their  final  resting  place  is  now  lost.  There  was  a  proverb  current  among  the 
common  people  that  the  bones  of  a  cruel  King  could  not  be  hid ;  they  made  fish 
hooks  and  arrows  of  them,  upon  which,  in  using  them,  they  vented  their  abhor 
rence  of  his  memory  in  bitter  execrations." 

The  account  of  the  circumstances  of  his  death,  as  written 
by  the  native  historians,  is  full  of  minute  detail,  but  there  is 
scarcely  a  line  of  it  which  does  not  mention  or  illustrate  some 


494  A    SICK    MONARCH. 

by-gone  custom  of  the  country.  In  this  respect  it  is  the  most 
comprehensive  document  I  have  yet  met  with.  I  will  quote 
it  entire : 

"When  Kamehameha  was  dangerously  sick,  and  the  priests  were  unable  to  cure 
him,  they  said  :  '  Be  of  good  courage  and  build  a  house  for  the  god'  (his  own  pri 
vate  god  or  idol),  that  thou  mayest  recover.'  The  chiefs  corroborated  this  advice 
of  the  priests,  and  a  place  of  worship  was  prepared  for  Kukailimoku,  and  conse 
crated  in  the  evening.  They  proposed  also  to  the  King,  with  a  view  to  prolong 
his  life,  that  human  victims  should  be  sacrificed  to  his  deity ;  upon  which  the 
greater  part  of  the  people  absconded  through  fear  of  death,  and  concealed  them 
selves  in  hiding  places  till  the  tabu*  in  which  destruction  impended,  was  past. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  Kamehameha  approved  of  the  plan  of  the  chiefs  and  priests 
to  sacrifice  men,  as  he  was  known  to  say,  '  The  men  are  sacred  for  the  King ; ' 
meaning  that  they  were  for  the  service  of  his  successor.  This  information  was 
derived  from  Liholiho,  his  son. 

"After  this,  his  sickness  increased  to  such  a  degree  that  he  had  not  strength  to 
turn  himself  in  his  bed.  When  another  season,  consecrated  for  worship  at  the 
new  temple  (heiau]  arrived,  he  said  to  his  son,  Liholiho,  '  Go  thou  and  make  sup 
plication  to  thy  god  ;  I  am  not  able  to  go,  and  will  offer  my  prayers  at  home.' 
When  his  devotions  to  his  feathered  god,  Kukailimoku,  were  concluded,  a  certain 
religiously  disposed  individual,  who  had  a  bird  god,  suggested  to  the  King  that 
through  its  influence  his  sickness  might  be  removed.  The  name  of  this  god  was 
Pua ;  its  body  was  made  of  a  bird,  now  eaten  by  the  Hawaiians,  and  called  in 
their  language  alae.  Kamehameha  was  willing  that  a  trial  should  be  made,  and 
two  houses  were  constructed  to  facilitate  the  experiment ;  but  while  dwelling  in 
them  he  became  so  very  weak  as  not  to  receive  food.  After  lying  there  three 
days,  his  wives,  children  and  chiefs,  perceiving  that  he  was  very  low,  returned 
him  to  his  own  house.  In  the  evening  he  was  carried  to  the  eating  house,f 
where  he  took  a  little  food  in  his  mouth  which  he  did  not  swallow ;  also  a  cup  of 
water.  The  chiefs  requested  him  to  give  them  his  counsel;  but  he  made  no  reply, 
and  was  carried  back  to  the  dwelling  house ;  but  when  near  midnight — ten  o'clock, 
perhaps — he  was  carried  again  to  the  place  to  eat ;  but,  as  before,  he  merely  tasted 
of  what  was  presented  to  him.  Then  Kaikioewa  addressed  him  thus:  'Here  we 
all  are,  your  younger  brethren,  your  son  Liholiho  and  your  foreigner ;  impart  to  us 
your  dying  charge,  that  Liholiho  and  Kaahumanu  may  hear.'  Then  Kamohame- 
ha  inquired,  '  What  do  you  say  ?  '  Kaikioe wa  repeated>  '  Your  counsels  for  us.' 

*Tabu  (pronounced  tah-boo,)  means  prohibition  (we  have  borrowed  it,)  or  sacred. 
The  tabu  was  sometimes  permanent,  sometimes  temporary ;  and  the  person  or 
thing  placed  under  tabu  was  for  the  time  being  sacred  to  the  purpose  for  which  it 
was  set  apart.  In  the  above  case  the  victims  selected  under  the  tabu  would  be 
sacred  to  the  sacrifice. 

fit  was  deemed  pollution  to  eai  in  the  same  hut  a  person  <»1«pt  in — the  fact 
that  the  patient  was  dying  could  not  modify  the  rigid  etiquette. 


HUMAN    SACRIFICES    AT    HIS    DEATH.  495 

He  then  said,  '  Move  on  in  my  good  way  and — .'  He  could  proceed  no  further. 
The  foreigner,  Mr.  Young,  embraced  and  kissed  him.  Hoapili  also  embraced  him, 
whispering  something  in  his  ear,  after  which  he  was  taken  back  to  the  house. 
About  twelve  he  was  carried  once  more  to  the  house  for  eating,  into  which  hi3 
head  entered,  while  his  body  was  in  the  dwelling  house  immediately  adjoining.  It 
should  be  remarked  that  this  frequent  carrying  of  a  sick  chief  from  one  house  to 
another  resulted  from  the  tabu  system,  then  in  force.  There  were  at  that  time 
six  houses  (huts)  connected  with  an  establishment — one  was  for  worship,  one  for 
the  men  to  eat  in,  an  eating  house  for  the  women,  a  house  to  sleep  in,  a  house  in 
which  to  manufacture  kapa  (native  cloth)  and  one  where,  at  certain  intervals,  the 
women  might  dwell  in  seclusion. 

"  The  sick  was  once  more  taken  to  his  house,  when  he  expired ;  this  was  at  two 
o'clock,  a  circumstance  from  which  Leleiohoku  derived  his  name.  As  he  breathed 
his  last,  Kalaimoku  came  to  the  eating  house  to  order  those  in  it  to  go  out.  There 
were  two  aged  persons  thus  directed  to  depart;  one  went, the  other  remained  on 
account  of  love  to  the  King,  by  whom  he  had  formerly  been  kindly  sustained. 
The  children  also  were  sent  away.  Then  Kalaimoku-  came  to  the  house,  and  the 
chiefs  had  a  consultation.  One  of  them  spoke  thus  :  '  This  is  my  thought — we 
will  eat  him  raw.'*  Kaahumanu  (one  of  the  dead  King's  widows)  replied,  'Per 
haps  his  body  is  not  at  our  disposal ;  that  is  more  properly  with  his  successor. 
Our  part  in  him — his  breath — has  departed ;  his  remains  will  be  disposed  of  by 
Liholiho.' 

"  After  this  conversation  the  body  was  taken  into  the  consecrated  house  for  the 
performance  of  the  proper  rites  by  the  priest  and  the  new  King.  The  name  of 
this  ceremony  is  uko;  and  when  the  sacred  hog  was  baked  the  priest  offered  it  to 
the  dead  body,  and  it  became  a  god,  the  King  at  the  same  time  repeating  the  cus 
tomary  prayers. 

"  Then  the  priest,  addressing  himself  to  the  King  and  chiefs,  said :  '  I  will  now 
make  known  to  you  the  rules  to  be  observed  respecting  persons  to  be  sacrificed  on 
the  burial  of  this  body.  If  you  obtain  one  man  before  the  corpse  is  removed,  one 
will  be  sufficient ;  but  after  it  leaves  this  house  four  will  be  required.  If  delayed 
until  we  carry  the  corpse  to  the  grave  there  must  be  ten ;  but  after  it  is  deposited 
in  the  grave  there  must  be  fifteen.  To-morrow  morning  there  will  be  a.  tabu,  and, 
if  the  sacrifice  be  delayed  until  that  time,  forty  men  must  die.' 

"  Then  the  high  priest,  Hewahewa,  inquired  of  the  chiefs,  '  Where  shall  be  the 
residence  of  King  Liholiho  ?  '  They  replied,  '  Where,  indeed  ?  You,  of  all  men, 
ought  to  know.'  Then  the  priest  observed,  '  There  are  two  suitable  places ;  one 
is  Kau,  the  other  is  Kohala.'  The  chiefs  preferred  the  latter,  as  it  was  more 
thickly  inhabited.  The  priest  added,  '  These  are  proper  places  for  the  King's  res 
idence;  but  he  must  not  remain  in  Kona,  for  it  is  polluted.'  This  was  agreed  to. 
It  was  now  break  of  day.  As  he  was  being  carried  to  the  place  of  burial  the  peo- 

*This  sounds  suspicious,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  all  Sandwich  Island  historians, 
white  and  black,  protest  that  cannibalism  never  existed  in  the  islands.  However, 
since  they  only  proposed  to  "  eat  him  raw "  we  "  won't  count  that".  Bit  it 
would  certainly  have  been  cannibalism  if  they  had  cooked  him. — [M.  T.] 


496  DISPOSAL    OF    HIS    BODY. 

pie  perceived  that  their  King  was  dead,  and  they  wailed.  When  the  corpse  was 
removed  from  the  house  to  the  tomb,  a  distance  of  one  chain,  the  procession  was 
met  by  a  certain  man  who  was  ardently  attached  to  the  deceased.  He  leaped  upon 
the  chiefs  who  were  carrying  the  King's  body ;  he  desired  to  die  with  him  on  ac 
count  of  his  love.  The  chiefs  drove  him  away.  He  persisted  in  making  nume 
rous  attempts,  which  were  unavailing.  Kalaimoka  also  had  it  in  his  heart  to  die 
with  him,  but  was  prevented  by  Hookio. 

"  The  morning  following  Kamehameha's  death,  Liholiho  and  his  train  departed 
for  Kohala,  according  to  the  suggestions  of  the  priest,  to  avoid  the  defilement 
occasioned  by  the  dead.  At  this  time  if  a  chief  died  the  land  was  polluted,  and 
the  heirs  sought  a  residence  in  another  part  of  the  country  until  the  corpse  was 
dissected  and  the  bones  tied  in  a  bundle,  which  being  done,  the  season  of  defile 
ment  terminated.  If  the  deceased  were  not  a  chief,  the  house  only  was  defiled 
which  became  pure  again  on  the  burial  of  the  body.  Such  were  the  laws  on  this 
subject. 

"  On  the  morning  on  which  Liholiho  sailed  in  his  canoe  for  Kohala,  the  chiefs 
and  people  mourned  after  their  manner  on  occasion  of  a  chiefs  death,  conduct 
ing  themselves  like  madmen  and  like  beasts.  Their  conduct  was  such  as  to  for 
bid  description;  The  priests,  also,  put  into  action  the  sorcery  apparatus,  that  the 
person  who  had  prayed  the  King  to  death  might  die ;  for  it  was  not  believed  that 
Kamehameha's  departure  was  the  effect  either  of  sickness  or  old  age.  When  the 
sorcerers  set  up  by  their  fire-places  stick  with  a  strip  of  kapa  flying  at  the  top, 
the  chief  Keeaumoku,  Kaahumaun's  brother,  came  in  a  state  of  intoxication  and 
broke  the  flag-staff  of  the  sorcerers,  from  which  it  was  inferred  that  Kaahumanu 
and  her  friends  had  been  instrumental  in  the  King's  death.  On  this  account  they 
were  subjected  to  abuse." 

You  have  the  contrast,  now,  and  a  strange  one  it  is.  This 
great  Queen,  Kaahumanu,  who  was  "subjected  to  abuse"  dur 
ing  the  frightful  orgies  that  followed  the  King's  death,  in 
accordance  with  ancient  custom,  afterward  became  a  devout 
Christian  and  a  steadfast  and  powerful  friend  of  the  missionaries. 

Dogs  were,  and  still  are,  reared  and  fattened  for  food,  by  the 
natives — hence  the  reference  to  their  value  in  one  of  the  above 
paragraphs. 

Forty  years  ago  it  was  the  custom  in  the  Islands  to  suspend 
all  law  for  a  certain  number  of  days  after  the  death  of  a  royal 
personage  ;  and  then  a  saturnalia  ensued  which  one  may  picture 
to  himself  after  a  fashion,  but  not  in  the  full  horror  of  the  real 
ity.  The  people  shaved  their  heads,  knocked  out  a  tooth  or 
two,  plucked  out  an  eye  sometimes,  cut,  bruised,  mutilated  or 


AFTER    BURIAL    ORGIES.  49T 

burned  their  flesh,  got  drunk,  burned  each  other's  huts,  maimed 
or  murdered  one  another  according  to  the  caprice  of  the  mo 
ment,  and  both  sexes  gave  themselves  up  to  brutal  and  unbri 
dled  licentiousness.  And  after  it  all,  came  a  torpor  from  which 


FOBMEtt  JFDKEKAL  OliGJES. 

the  nation  slowly  emerged  bewildered  and  dazed,  as  if  from  a 
hideous  half-remembered  nightmare.  They  were  not  the  salt 
of  the  earth,  those  "  gentle  children  of  the  sun." 

The  natives  still  keep  up  an  old  custom  of  theirs  which  can 
not  be  comforting  to  an  invalid.  When  they  think  a  sick 
friend  is  going  to  die,  a  couple  of  dozen  neighbors  surround 
his  hut  and  keep  up  a  deafening  wailing  night  and  day  till  he 
either  dies  or  gets  well.  No  doubt  this  arrangement  has  helped 
many  a  subject  to  a  shroud  before  his  appointed  time. 

They  surround  a  hut  and  wail  in  the  same  heart-broken 
way  when  its  occupant  returns  from  a  journey.     This  is  their 
dismal  idea  of  a  welcome.     A  very  little  of  it  would  go  a  great 
wav  with  most  of  us. 
32f 


CHAPTER  LXIX. 

BOUND  for  Hawaii  (a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  distant,)  to 
visit  the  great  volqano  and  behold  the  other  notable  things 
which  distinguish  that  .island;  above  the  remainder  of  the  group, 
we  sailed  from  Honolulu  on  a  certain  Saturday  afternoon,  in 
the  good  schooner  Boomerang. 

The  Boomerang  was  .-about  as  long  as  two  street  cars,  and 
about  as  wide  as  one.  She  was  so  small  (though  she  was  larger 
than  the  majority  of  the  inter-island  coasters)  that  when  I  stood 
on  her  deck  I  felt  but  little  smaller  than  the  Colossus  of  Rhodes 
must  have  felt  when  he  had  a  man-of-war  under  him.  I  could 
reach  the  water  when  she  lay  over  under  a  strong  breeze. 
When  the  Captain  and  my  comrade  (a  Mr.  Billings),  myself 
and  four  other  persons  were  all  assembled  on  the  little  after 
portion  of  the  deck  which  is  sacred  to  the  cabin  passengers,  it 
was  full — there  was  not  room  for  any  more  quality  folks.  An 
other  section  of  the  deck,  twice  as  large  as  ours,  was  full  of 
natives  of  both  sexes,  with  their  customary  dogs,  mats,  blankets, 
pipes,  calabashes  of  poi,  fleas,  and  other  luxuries  and  baggage 
of  minor  importance.  As  soon  as  we  set  sail  the  natives  all 
lay  down  on  the  deck  as  thick  as  negroes  in  a  slave-pen,  and 
smoked,  conversed,  and  spit  on  each  other,  and  were  truly 
sociable. 

The  little  low-ceiled  cabin  below  was  rather  larger  than  a 
hearse,  and  as  dark  as  a  vault.  It  had  two  coffins  on  each  side 
— I  mean  two  bunks.  A  small  table,  capable  of  accommodating 


"ONCE    MORE    UPON    THE    WATERS.  499 

three  persons  at  dinner,  stood  against  the  forward  bulkhead, 
and  over  it  hung  the  dingiest  whale  oil  lantern  that  ever  peo 
pled  the  obscurity  of  a  dungeon  with  ghostly  shapes.  The 
floor  room  unoccupied  was  not  extensive.  One  might  swing 
a  cat  in  it,  perhaps,  but  not  a  long  cat.  The  hold  forward  of 
the  bulkhead  had  but  little  freight  in  it,  and  from  morning  till 
night  a  portly  old  rooster,  with  a 
voice  like  Baalam's  ass,  and  the 
same  disposition  to  use  it,  strutted 
up  and  down  in  that  part  of  the 
vessel  arid  crowed.  He  usually 
took  dinner  at  six  o'clock,  and  then, 
after  an  hour  devoted  to  medita 
tion,  he  mounted  a  barrel  and  crow 
ed  a  good  part  of  the  night.  He 
got  hoarser  and  hoarser  all  the  time, 
but  he  scorned  to  allow  any  per 
sonal  consideration  to  interfere  with 

his  duty,  and  kept  up  his  labors  in  defiance  of  threatened 
diphtheria. 

Sleeping  was  out  of  the  question  when  he  was  on  watch. 
He  was  a  source  of  genuine  aggravation  and  annoyance.  It 
was  worse  than  useless  to  shout  at  him  or  apply  offensive  epi 
thets  to  him — he  only  took  these  things  for  applause,  and 
strained  himself  to  make  more  noise.  Occasionally,  during  the 
day,  I  threw  potatoes  at  him  through  an  aperture  in  the  Bulk 
head,  but  he  only  dodged  and  went  on  crowing. 

The  first  night,  as  I  lay  in  my  coffin,  idly  watching  the  dim 
lamp  swinging  to  the  rolling  of  the  ship,  and  snuffing  the  nau 
seous  odors  of  bilge  water,  I  felt  something  gallop  over  me.  J 
turned  out  promptly.  However,  I  turned  in  again  when  I 
found  it  was  only  a  rat.  Presently  something  galloped  over 
me  once  more.  I  knew  it  was  not  a  rat  this  time,  and  I  thought 
it  might  be  a  centipede,  because  the  Captain  had  killed  one 
on  deck  in  the  afternoon.  I  furned  out.  The  first  glance  at 
the  pillow  showed  me  a  repulsive  sentinel  perched  upon  each 


500  OUR    PASSENGERS. 

end  of  it — cockroaches  as  large  as  peach  leaves — fellows  with 
long,  quivering  antennae  and  fiery,  malignant  eyes.  They 
were  grating  their  teeth  like  tobacco  worms,  and  appeared  to 
be  dissatisfied  about  something.  I  had  often  heard  that  these 
reptiles  were  in  the  habit  of  eating  off  sleeping  sailors'  toe  nails 
down  to  the  quick,  and  I  would  not  get  in  the  bunk  any  more. 
I  lay  down  on  the  floor.  But  a  rat  came  and  bothered  me, 
and  shortly  afterward  a  procession  of  cockroaches  arrived  and 
camped  in  my  hair.  In  a  few  moments  the  rooster  was  crow 
ing  with  uncommon  spirit  and  a  party  of  fleas  were  throwing 
double  somersaults  about  my  person  in  the  wildest  disorder, 
and  taking  a  bite  every  time  they  struck.  I  was  beginning  to 
feel  really  annoyed.  I  got  up  and  put  my  clothes  on  and  went 
on  deck. 

The  above  is  not  overdrawn ;  it  is  a  truthful  sketch  of  inter- 
island  schooner  life.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  keeping  a  ves 
sel  in  elegant  condition,  when  she  carries  molasses  and  Kanakas. 

It  was  compensation  for  my  sufferings  to  come  unexpectedly 
upon  so  beautiful  a  scene  as  met  my  eye — to  step  suddenly  out 
of  the  sepulchral  gloom  of  the  cabin  and  stand  under  the  strong 
light  of  the  moon — in  t]ie  centre,  as  it  were,  of  a  glittering  sea 
of  liquid  silver — to  see  the  broad  sails  straining  in  the  gale, 
the  ship  keeled  over  on  her  side,  the  angry  foam  hissing  past 
her  lee  bulwarks,  and  sparkling  sheets  of  spray  dashing  high 
over  her  bows  and  raining  upon  her  decks ;  to  brace  myself  and 
hang  fast  to  the  first  object  that  presented  itself,  with  hat 
jammed  down  and  coat  tails  whipping  in  the  breeze,  and  feel 
that  exhilaration  that  thrills  in  one's  hair  and  quivers  down 
his  back  bone  when  he  knows  that  every  inch  of  canvas  is 
drawing  and  the  vessel  cleaving  through  the  waves  at  her  ut 
most  speed.     There  was  no  darkness,  no  dimness,  no  obscurity 
there.     All  was  brightness,  every  object  was  vividly  defined. 
Every  prostrate  Kanaka  ;  every  coil  of  rope ;  every  calabash  of 
poi ;  every  puppy  ;  every  seam  in  the  flooring ;  every  bolthead ; 
every  object,  however  minute,  showed  sharp  and  distinct  in  its 
every  outline ;  and  the  shadow  of  the  broad  mainsail  lay  black 


IN    THE    MOONLIGHT.  501 

as  a  pall  upon  the  deck,  leaving  Billings's  white  upturned  face 
glorified  and  his  body  in  a  total  eclipse. 

Monday  morning  we  were  close  to  the  island  of  Hawaii. 
Two  of  its  high  mountains  were  in  view — Hauna  Loa  and 
Hualaiai.  The  latter  is  an  imposing  peak,  but  being  only  ten 


MOONLIGHT  ON  THE  WATBR. 


thousand  feet  high  is  seldom  mentioned  or  heard  of.  Manna 
Loa  is  said  to  be  sixteen  thousand  feet  high.  The  rays  of 
glittering  snow  and  ice,  that  clasped  its  summit  like  a  claw, 
looked  refreshing  when  viewed  from  the  blistering  climate  we 
were  in.  One  could  stand  on  that  mountain  (wrapped  up  in 
blankets  and  furs  to  keep  warm),  and  while  he  nibbled  a  snow 
ball  or  an  icicle  to  quench  his  thirst  he  could  look  down  the 
long  sweep  of  its  sides  and  see  spots  where  plants  are  growing 
that  grow  only  where  the  bitter  cold  of  Winter  prevails ;  lower 
down  he  could  see  sections  devoted  to  productions  that  thrive 
in  the  temperate  zone  alone  ;  and  at  the  bottom  of  the  moun- 


502  ORANGES    AND    PEACHES. 

tain  he  couia  see  the  home  of  the  tufted  cocoa-palms  and  other 
species  of  vegetation  that  grow  only  in  the  sultry  atmosphere 
of  eternal  Summer.  He  could  see  all  the  climes  of  the  world 
at  a  single  glance  of  the  eye,  and  that  glance  would  only  pass 
over  a  distance  of  four  or  five  miles  as  the  bird  flies  I 

By  and  by  we  took  boat  and  went  ashore  at  Kailua,  design 
ing  to  ride  horseback  through  the  pleasant  orange  and  coffee 
region  of  Kona,  and  rejoin  the  vessel  at  a  point  some  leagues 
distant.  This  journey  is  well  worth  taking.  The  trail  passes 
along  on  high  ground — say  a  thousand  feet  above  sea  level — 
and  usually  about  a  mile  distant  from  the  ocean,  which  is  always 
in  sight,  save  that  occasionally  you  find  yourself  buried  in  the 
forest  in  the  midst  of  a  rank  tropical  vegetation  and  a  dense 
growth  of  trees,  whose  great  bows  overarch  the  road  and  shut 
out  sun  and  sea  and  everything,  and  leave  you  in  a  dim,  shady 
tunnel,  haunted  with  invisible  singing  birds  and  fragrant  with 
the  odor  of  flowers.  It  was  pleasant  to  ride  occasionally  in 
the  warm  sun,  and  feast  the  eye  upon  the  ever-changing  pano 
rama  of  the  forest  (beyond  and  below  us),  with  its  many  tints, 
its  softened  lights  and  shadows,  its  billowy  undulations  sweep 
ing  gently  down  from  the  mountain  to  the  sea.  It  was  pleasant 
also,  at  intervals,  to  leave  the  sultry  sun  and  pass  into  the  cool, 
green  depths  of  this  forest  and  indulge  in  sentimental  reflections 
under  the  inspiration  of  its  brooding  twilight  and  its  whispering 
foliage. 

We  rode  through  one  orange  grove  that  had  ten  thousand 
trees  in  it !  They  were  all  laden  with  fruit. 

At  one  farmhouse  we  got  some  large  peaches  of  excellent 
flavor.  This  fruit,  as  a  general  thing,  does  not  do  well  in  the 
Sandwich  Islands.  It  takes  a  sort  of  almond  shape,  and  is 
small  and  bitter.  It  needs  frost,  they  say,  and  perhaps  it  does ; 
if  this  be  so,  it  will  have  a  good  opportunity  to  go  on  needing 
it,  as  it  will  not  be  likely  to  get  it.  The  trees  from  which  the 
fine  fruit  I  have  spoken  of,  came,  had  been  planted  and  replanted 
sixteen  times,  and  to  this  treatment  the  proprietor  of  the  orchard 
attributed  his  success. 


SUGAR    PLANTATIONS. 


503 


We  passed  several  sugar  plantations — new  ones  and  not  very 
extensive.  The  crops  were,  in  most  cases,  third  rattoons.  [NorE. 
—The  first  crop  is  called  "  plant  cane  ;"  subsequent  crops  which 
spring  from  the  original  roots,  without  replanting,  are  called 
"  rattoons."]  Almost  everywhere  on  the  island  of  Hawaii 
sugar-cane  matures  in  twelve  months,  both  rattoons  and  plant, 
and  although  it  ought  to  be  taken  off  as  soon  as  it  tassels,  no 
doubt,  it  is  not  absolutely  necessary  to  do  it  until  about  four 
months  afterward.  In  Kona,  the  average  yield  of  an  acre  of 
ground  is  two  tons  of  sugar,  they  say.  This  is  only  a  moderate 
yield  for  these  islands,  but  would  be  astounding  for  Louisiana 
and  most  other  sugar  growing  countries.  The  plantations  in 
Kona  being  on  pretty  high  ground — up  among  the  light  and 
frequent  rains — no  irrigation,  whatever  is  required. 


CHAPTER    LXX. 

WE  stopped  some  time  at  one  of  the  plantations,  to  rest 
ourselves  and  refresh  the  horses.  We  had  a  chatty 
conversation  with  several  gentlemen  present ;  but  there  was 
one  person,  a  middle  aged  man,  with  an  absent  look  in  his  face, 
who  simply  glanced  np,  gave  us  good-day  and  lapsed  again  into 
the  meditations  which  our  coming  had  interrupted.  The 
planters  whispered  us  not  to  mind  him — crazy.  They  said  he 
was  in  the  Islands  for  his  health  ;  was  a  preacher ;  his  home, 
Michigan.  They  said  that  if  he  woke  up  presently  and  fell  to 
talking  about  a  correspondence  which  he  had  some  time  held 
with  Mr.  Greeley  about  a  trifle  of  some  kind,  we  must  humor 
him  and  listen  with  interest ;  and  we  must  humor  his  fancy 
that  this  correspondence  was  the  talk  of  the  world. 

It  was  easy  to  see  that  he  was  a  gentle  creature  and  that  his 
madness  had  nothing  vicious  in  it.  He  looked  pale,  and  a  little 
worn,  as  if  with  perplexing  thought  and  anxiety  of  mind.  He 
sat  a  long  time,  looking  at  the  floor,  and  at  intervals  muttering 
to  himself  and  nodding  his  head  acquiescingly  or  shaking  it 
in  mild  protest.  He  was  lost  in  his  thought,  or  in  his  memo 
ries.  "We  continued  our  talk  with  the  planters,  branching 
from  subject  to  subject.  But  at  last  the  word  "  circumstance," 
casually  dropped,  in  the  course  of  conversation,  attracted  his 
attention  and  brought  an  eager  look  into  his  countenance.  He 
faced  about  in  his  chair  and  said : 

"Circumstance?      What  circumstance?      Ah,  I  know — I 


ANOTER    DROLL    CHARACTER.  505 

know  too  well.  So  you  have  heard  of  it  too."  [With  a  sigh.] 
"Well,  no  matter — all  the  world  has  heard  of  it.  All  the 
world.  The  whole  world.  It  is  a  large  world,  too,  for  a  thing 
to  travel  so  far  in — now  isn't  it  ?  Yes,  yes — the  Greeley  cor 
respondence  with  Erickson  has  created  the  saddest  and  bitterest 
controversy  on  both  sides  of  the  ocean — and  still  they  keep  it 
up !  It  makes  us  famous,  but  at  what  a  sorrowful  sacrifice  ! 
I  was  so  sorry  when  I  heard  that  it  had  caused  that  bloody  and 
distressful  war  over  there  in  Italy.  It  was  little  comfort  to 
me,  after  so  much  bloodshed,  to  know  that  the  victors  sided 
with  me,  and  the  vanquished  with  Greeley. — It  is  little  comfort 
to  know  that  Horace  Greeley  is  responsible  for  the  battle  of 
Sadowa,  and  not  me.  Queen  Yictoria  wrote  me  that  she  felt 
just  as  I  did  about  it — she  said  that  as  much  as  she  was  op- 


<  '< , 

THE  DEMENTED. 


posed  to  Greeley  and  the  spirit  he  showed  in  the  correspondence 
with  me,  she  would  not  have  had  Sadowa  happen  for  hundreds 
of  dollars.  I  can  show  you  her  letter,  if  you  would  like  to  see 
it.  But  gentlemen,  much  as  you  may  think  you  know  about 
that  unhappy  correspondence,  you  cannot  know  the  straight  of 
it  till  you  hear  it  from  my  lips.  It  has  always  been  garbled  in 


506  MBS.  BEAZELEY    AND    HER    SON. 

the  journals,  and  even  in  history.  Yes,  even  in  history — think 
of  it !  Let  me — -please  let  me,  give  you  the  matter,  exactly  as 
it  occurred.  I  truly  will  not  abuse  your  confidence." 

Then  he  leaned  forward,  all  interest,  all  earnestness,  and  told 
his  story — and  told  it  appealingly,  too,  and  yet  in  the  simplest 
and  most  unpretentious  way ;  indeed,  in  such  a  way  as  to  sug 
gest  to  one,  all  the  time,  that  this  was  a  faithful,  honorable 
witness,  giving  evidence  in  the  sacred  interest  of  justice,  and 
under  oath.  He  said  : 

"  Mrs.  Beazeley— Mrs.  Jackson  Beazeley,  widow,  cf  the  village 
of  Campbellton,  Kansas, — wrote  me  about  a  matter  which  was 
near  her  heart — a  matter  which  many  might  think  trivial,  but 
to  her  it  was  a  thing  of  deep  concern.  I  was  living  in  Michi 
gan,  then — serving  in  the  ministry.  She  was,  and  is,  an  esti 
mable  woman — a  woman  to  whom  poverty  and  hardship  have 
proven  incentives  to  industry,  in  place  of  discouragements. 
Her  only  treasure  was  her  son  William,  a  youth  just  verging 
upon  manhood  ;  religious,  amiable,  and  sincerely  attached  to 
agriculture.  He  was  the  widow's  comfort  and  her  pride.  And 
so,  moved  by  her  love  for  him,  she  wrote  me  about  a  matter, 
as  I  have  said  before,  which  lay  near  her  heart — because  it  lay 
near  her  boy's.  She  desired  me  to  confer  with  Mr.  Greeley 
about  turnips.  Turnips  were  the  dream  of  her  child's  young 
ambition.  While  other  youths  were  frittering  away  in  frivo 
lous  amusements  the  precious  years  of  budding  vigor  which 
God  had  given  them  for  useful  preparation,  this  boy  was  pa 
tiently  enriching  his  mind  with  information  concerning  turnips. 
The  sentiment  which  he  felt  toward  the  turnip  was  akin  to 
adoration.  He  could  not  think  of  the  turnip  without  emotion ; 
he  could  not  speak  of  it  calmly ;  he  could  not  contemplate  it 
without  exaltation.  He  could  not  eat  it  without  shedding  tears. 
All  the  poetry  in  his  sensitive  nature  was  in  sympathy  with 
the  gracious  vegetable.  With  the  earliest  pipe  of  dawn  he 
sought  his  patch,  and  when  the  curtaining  night  drove  him 
from  it  he  shut  himself  up  with  his  books  and  garnered  statis 
tics  till  sleep  overcame  him.  On  rainy  days  he  sat  and  talked 


MEDITATIONS    ON    TURNIPS. 


507 


hours  together  with  his  mother  about  turnips.  "When  company 
came,  he  made  it  his  loving  duty  to  put  aside  everything  else 
and  converse  with  them  all  the  day  long  of  his  great  joy  in 


DISCUSSINa  TURNIPS. 

the  turnip.  And  yet,  was  this  joy  rounded  and  complete  ? 
Was  there  no  secret  alloy  of  unhappiness  in  it  ?  Alas,  there 
was.  There  was  a  canker  gnawing  at  his  heart ;  the  noblest 
inspiration  of  his  soul  eluded  his  endeavor — viz  :  he  could  not 
make  of  the  turnip  a  climbing  vine.  Months  went  by ;  the 
bloom  forsook  his  cheek,  the  fire  faded  out  of  his  eye ;  sighings 
and  abstraction  usurped  the  place  of  smiles  and  cheerful  con 
verse.  But  a  watchful  eye  noted  these  things  and  in  time  a 
motherly  sympathy  unsealed  the  secret.  Hence  the  letter  to 
me.  She  pleaded  for  attention — she  said  her  boy  was  dying 
by  inches. 

"  I  was  a  stranger  to  Mr.  Greeley,  but  what  of  that  ?  The 
matter  was  urgent.  I  wrote  and  begged  him  to  solve  the  dif 
ficult  problem  if  possible  and  save  the  student's  life.  My  in 
terest  grew,  until  it  partook  of  the  anxiety  of  the  mother.  I 
waited  in  much  suspense.—  At  last  the  answer  came. 


508  A    LETTER    FROM    A    HIGH    AUTHORITY. 

"  I  found  that  I  could  not  read  it  readily,  the  handwriting 
being  unfamiliar  and  my  emotions  somewhat  wrought  up.  It 
seemed  to  refer  in  part  to  the  boy's  case,  but  chiefly  to  other 
and  irrelevant  matters — such  as  paving-stones,  electricity,  oys 
ters,  arid  something  which  I  took  to  be  i  absolution '  or  <  agra- 
rianism,'  I  could  not  be  certain  which  ;  still,  these  appeared  to 
be  simply  casual  mentions,  nothing  more;  friendly  in  spirit, 
without  doubt,  but  lacking  the  connection  or  coherence  neces 
sary  to  make  them  useful. — I  judged  that  my  understanding 
was  affected  by  my  feelings,  and  so  laid  the  letter  away  till 
morning. 

"  In  the  morning  I  read  it  again,  but  with  difficulty  and 
uncertainty  still,  for  I  had  lost  some  little  rest  and  my  mental 
vision  seemed  clouded.  The  note  was  more  connected,  now, 
but  did  not  meet  the  emergency  it  was  expected  to  meet.  It 
was  too  discursive.  It  appeared  to  read  as  follows,  though  I 
was  not  certain  of  some  of  the  words : 

*  Polygamy  dissembles  majesty ;  extracts  redeem  polarity ;  causes  hitherto  exist. 
Ovations  pursue  wisdom,  or  warts  inherit  and  condemn.  Boston,  botany,  cakes, 
folony  undertakes,  but  who  shall  allay  ?  We  fear  not.  Trxwly, 

HEVACE  EVEELOJ.' 

"  But  there  did  not  seem  to  be  a  word  about  turnips.  There 
seemed  to  be  no  suggestion  as  to  how  they  might  be  made  to 
grow  like  vines.  There  was  not  even  a  reference  to  the  Beaze- 
leys.  I  slept  upon  the  matter ;  I  ate  no  supper,  neither  any 
breakfast  next  morning.  So  I  resumed  my  work  with  a  brain 
refreshed,  and  was  very  hopeful.  Now  the  letter  took  a  differ 
ent  aspect — all  save  the  signature,  which  latter  I  judged  to  be 
only  a  harmless  affectation  of  Hebrew.  The  epistle  was  neces 
sarily  from  Mr.  Greeley,  for  it  bore  the  printed  heading  of 
The  Tribune,  and  I  had  written  to  no  one  else  there.  The 
letter,  I  say,  had  taken  a  different  aspect,  but  still  its  language 
was  eccentric  and  avoided  the  issue.  It  now  appeared,  to  say : 

'Bolivia  extemporizes  mackerel;  borax  esteems  polygamy;  sausages  wither  in 
the  east  Creation  perdu,  is  done;  for  woes  inherent  one  can  damn.  Buttons, 
buttons,  corks,  geology  underrates  but  we  shall  allay.  My  beer's  out.  Yrxwly, 

HEVACE  EVEELOJ.' 


HORACE    G  REE  LEY—  HIS    MARK. 


509 


co£7j^  ***£**>•****>*< 

r"u<£.     t&>    tfjifv^    «=>._tf'*t>- 


"  I  was  evidently  overworked.  My  comprehension  was  im 
paired.  Therefore  I  gave  two  days  to  recreation,  and  then 
returned  to  my  task  greatly  refreshed.  The  letter  now  took 
this  form  : 

1  Poultices  do  sometimes  choke  swine  ;  tulips  reduce  posterity;  causes  leather 
to  resist.  Our  notions  empower  wisdom,  her  let's  afford  while  we  can.  Butter 
but  any  cakes,  fill  any  undertaker,  we'll  wean  him  from  his  filly.  We  feel  hot. 

Yrxwly,  HEYACB  EVEELOJ.' 


510  AN    INDIGNANT   REJOINER. 

"  I  was  still  not  satisfied.  These  generalities  did  not  meet 
the  question.  They  were  crisp,  and  vigorous,  and  delivered 
with  a  confidence  that  almost  compelled  conviction  ;  but  at  such 
a  time  as  this,  with  a  human  life  at  stake,  they  seemed  inap 
propriate,  worldly,  and  in  bad  taste.  At  any  other  time  I 
would  have  been  not  only  glad,  but  proud,  to  receive  from  a 
man  like  Mr.  Greeley  a  letter  of  this  kind,  and  would  have 
studied  it  earnestly  and  tried  to  improve  myself  all  I  could ; 
but  now,  with  that  poor  boy  in  his  far  home  languishing  for 
relief,  I  had  no  heart  for  learning. 

"  Three  days  passed  by,  and  I  read  the  note  again.  Again 
its  tenor  had  changed.  It  now  appeared  to  say : 

'  Potations  do  sometimes  wake  wines  ;  turnips  restrain  passion;  causes  necessary 
to  state.  Infest  the  poor  widow ;  her  lord's  effects  will  be  void.  But  dirt,  bath 
ing,  etc.,  etc.,  followed  unfairly,  will  worm  him  from  his  folly — so  swear  not. 

Yrxwly,  HEVACE  EVEELOJ.' 

"  This  was  more  like  it.  But  I  was  unable  to  proceed.  I 
was  too  much  worn.  The  word  i  turnips  '  brought  temporary 
joy  and  encouragement,  but  my  strength  was  so  much  impaired, 
and  the  delay  might  be  so  perilous  for  the  boy,  that  I  relin 
quished  the  idea  of  pursuing  the  translation  further,  and  re 
solved  to  do  what  I  ought  to  have  done  at  first.  I  sat  down 
and  wrote  Mr.  Greeley  as  follows : 

"  DEAR  SIR  :  I  fear  I  do  not  entirely  comprehend  your  kind  note.  It  cannot 
be  possible,  Sir,  that  *  turnips  restrain  passion ' — at  least  the  study  or  contempla 
tion  of  turnips  cannot — for  it  is  this  very  employment  that  has  scorched  our  poor 
friend's  mind  and  sapped  his  bodily  strength. — But  if  they  do  restrain  it,  will  you 
bear  with  us  a  little  further  and  explain  how  they  should  be  prepared  ?  I  observe 
that  you  say  '  causes  necessary  to  state,'  but  you  have  omitted  to  state  them. 

"Under  a  misapprehension,  you  seem  to  attribute  to  me  interested  motives  in 
this  matter — to  call  it  by  no  harsher  term.  But  I  assure  you,  dear  sir,  that  if  I 
seem  to  be  '  infesting  the  widow,'  it  is  all  seeming,  and  void  of  reality.  It  is  from 
no  seeking  of  mine  that  I  am  in  this  position.  She  asked  me,  herself,  to  write 
you.  I  never  have  infested  her — indeed  I  scarci-ly  know  her.  I  do  not  infest 
anybody.  I  try  to  go  along,  in  my  humble  way,  doing  as  near  right  as  I  can,  never 
harming  anybody,  and  never  throwing  out  insinuations.  As  for  '  her  lord  and  his 
effects,'  they  are  of  no  interest  to  me.  I  trust  I  have  effects  enough  of  my  own 
— shall  endeavor  to  get  along  with  them,  at  any  rate,  and  not  go  mousing  around 
to  get  hold  of  somebody's  that  are  'void"  But  do  you  not  see? — this  woman  is 
A  vridow — she  has  no  'lord.'  He  is  dead — or  pretended  to  be,  when  they  buried 


TRANSLATED    AT    LAST.  511 

him.  Therefore,  no  amount  of  *  dirt,  bathing,'  etc.,  etc.,  howsoever '  unfairly  fol 
lowed'  will  be  likely  to  '  worm  him  from  his  folly ' — if  being  dead  and  a  ghost  is 
'folly.'  Your  closing  remark  is  as  unkind  as  it  was  uncalled  for;  and  if  report 
says  true  you  might  have  applied  it  to  yourself,  sir,  with  more  point  and  less  impro 
priety.  Very  Truly  Yours,  SIMON  ERICKSON. 

"In  the  course  of  a  few  days,  Mr.  Greeley  did  what  would 
have  saved  a  world  of  trouble,  and  much  mental  and  bodily 
suffering  and  misunderstanding,  if  he  had  done  it  sooner.  To- 
wit,  he  sent  an  intelligible  rescript  or  translation  of  his  original 
note,  made  in  a  plain  hand  by  his  clerk.  Then  the  mystery 
cleared,  and  I  saw  that  his  heart  had  been  right,  all  the  time. 
I  will  recite  the  note  in  its  clarified  form : 

[Translation.] 

'  Potatoes  do  sometimes  make  vines  ;  turnips  remain  passive :  cause  unnecessary 
to  state.  Inform  the  poor  widow  her  lad's  efforts  will  be  vain.  But  diet,  bath 
ing,  etc.  etc.,  followed  uniformly,  will  wean  him  from  his  folly — so  fear  not. 

Yours,  HORACE  GREELEY.' 

"  But  alas,  it  was  too  late,  gentlemen — too  late.  The  crim 
inal  delay  had  done  its  work — young  Beazely  was  no  more. 
His  spirit  had  taken  its  flight  to  a  land  where  all  anxieties 
shall  be  charmed  away,  all  desires  gratified,  all  ambitions  real 
ized.  Poor  lad,  they  laid  him  to  his  rest  with  a  turnip  in  each 
hand." 

So  ended  Erickson,  and  lapsed  again  into  nodding,  mumbling, 
and  abstraction.  The  company  broke  up,  and  left  him  so.  ... 
But  they  did  not  say  what  drove  him  crazy.  In  the  momen 
tary  confusion,  I  forgot  to  ask. 


CHAPTER   LXXI. 

AT  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  we  were  winding  down  a 
mountain  of  dreary  and  desolate  lava  to  the  sea,  and  clos 
ing  our  pleasant  land  journey.  This  lava  is  the  accumulation 
of  ages ;  one  torrent  of  iire  after  another  has  rolled  down  here 
in  old  times,  and  built  up  the  island  structure  higher  and 
higher.  Underneath,  it  is  honey-combed  with  caves ;  it  would 
be  of  no  use  to  dig  wells  in  such  a  place ;  they  would  not  hold 
water — you  would  not  find  any  for  them  to  hold,  for  that  mat 
ter.  Consequently,  the  planters  depend  upon  cisterns. 

The  last  lava  flow  occurred  here  so  long  ago  that  there  are 
none  now  living  who  witnessed  it.  In  one  place  it  enclosed  and 
burned  down  a  grove  of  cocoa-nut  trees,  and  the  holes  in  the 
lava  where  the  trunks  stood  are  still  visible ;  their  sides  retain 
the  impression  of  the  bark ;  the  trees  fell  upon  the  burning 
river,  and  becoming  partly  submerged,  left  in  it  the  perfect 
counterpart  of  every  knot  and  branch  and  leaf,  and  even  nut, 
for  curiosity  seekers  of  a  long  distant  day  to  gaze  upon  and 
wonder  at. 

There  were  doubtless  plenty  of  Kanaka  sentinels  on  guard 
hereabouts  at  that  time,  but  they  did  not  leave  casts  of 
their  figures  in  the  lava  as  the  Roman  sentinels  at  Herculaneum 
and  Pompeii  did.  It  is  a  pity  it  is  so,  because  such  things  are 
so  interesting ;  but  so  it  is.  They  probably  went  away.  They 
went  away  early,  perhaps.  However,  they  had  their  merits ; 
the  Romans  exhibited  the  higher  pluck,  but  the  Kanakas 
showed  the  sounder  judgment. 


KEALAKEKUA,    BAY.  513 

Shortly  we  came  in  sight  of  that  spot  whose  history  is  so 
familiar  to  every  school-boy  in  the  wide  world — Kealakekua 
Bay — the  place  where  Captain  Cook,  the  great  circumnaviga 
tor,  was  killed  by  the  natives,  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago. 
The  setting  sun  was  naming  upon  it,  a  Summer  shower  was 
falling,  and  it  was  spanned  by  two  magnificent  rainbows.  Two 
men  who  were  in  advance  of  us  rode  through  one  of  these  and 
for  a  moment  their  garments  shone  with  a  more  than  regal 
gplendor.  "Why  did  not  Captain  Cook  have  taste  enough  to 
call  his  great  discovery  the  Rainbow  Islands  ?  These  charm 
ing  spectacles  are  present  to  you  at  every  turn  ;  they  are  com 
mon  in  all  the  islands ;  they  are  visible  every  day,  and  fre 
quently  at  night  also — not  the  silvery  bow  we  see  once  in  an 
age  in  the  States,  by  moonlight,  but  barred  with  all  bright  and 
beautiful  colors,  like  the  children  of  the  sun  and  rain.  I  saw 
one  of  them  a  few  nights  ago.  What  the  sailors  call  "  rain, 
dogs  " — little  patches  of  rainbow — are  often  seen  drifting  about 
the  heavens  in  these  latitudes,  like  stained  cathedral  windows. 

Kealakekua  Bay  is  a  little  curve  like  the  last  kink  of  a  snail- 
shell,  winding  deep  into  the  land,  seemingly  not  more  than  a 
mile  wide  from  shore  to  shore.  It  is  bounded  on  one  side — 
where  the  murder  was  done — by  a  little  flat  plain,  on  which 
stands  a  cocoanut  grove  and  some  ruined  houses ;  a  steep  wall 
of  lava,  a  thousand  feet  high  at  the  upper  end  and  three  or 
four  hundred  at  the  lower,  comes  down  from  the  mountain  and 
bounds  the  inner  extremity  of  it.  From  this  wall  the  place 
takes  its  name,  Kealakekua^  which  in  the  native  tongue  signi 
fies  "  The  Pathway  of  the  Gods."  They  say,  (and  still  believe, 
in  spite  of  their  liberal  education  in  Christianity),  that  the 
great  god  Lono,  who  used  to  live  upon  the  hillside,  always 
traveled  that  causeway  when  urgent  business  connected  with 
heavenly  affairs  called  him  down  to  the  seashore  in  a  hurry. 

As   the   red   sun   looked   across  the  placid  ocean  through 

the  tall,  clean  stems  of  the  cocoanut  trees,  like  a  blooming 

whiskey  bloat  through  the  bars  of  a  city  prison,  I  went  and  stood 

in  the  edge  of  the  water  on  the  flat  rock  pressed  by  Captain 

33f 


514 


CAPT.    COOK'S    ASSASSINATION. 


Cook's  feet  when  the  blow  was  dealt  which  took  away  his  life, 
and  tried  to  picture  in  my  mind  the  doomed  man  struggling  in 
the  midst  of  the  multitude  of  exasperated  savages — the  men 


KBALAKEKTJA  BAT  AND  COOK'S  MONUMENT. 


in  the  ship  crowding  to  the  vessel's  side  and  gazing  in  anxious 
dismay  toward  the  shore — the — but  I  discovered  that  I  could 
not  do  it. 

It  was  growing  dark,  the  rain  began  to  fall,  we  could  see  that 
the  distant  Boomerang  was  helplessly  becalmed  at  sea,  and  so  I 
adjourned  to  the  cheerless  little  box  of  a  warehouse  and  sat 
down  to  smoke  and  think,  and  wish  the  ship  would  make  the 
land — for  we  had  not  eaten  much  for  ten  hours  and  were  vic 
iously  hungry. 

Plain  unvarnished  history  takes  the  romance  out  of  Captain 
Cook's  assassination,  and  renders  a  deliberate  verdict  of  justifi 
able  homicide.  Wherever  he  went  among  the  islands,  he  was 
cordially  received  and  welcomed  by  the  inhabitants,  and  his 


COOK'S    MONUMENT.  515 

ships  lavishly  supplied  with  all  manner  of  food.  He  returned 
these  kindnesses  with  insult  and  ill-treatment.  Perceiving  that 
the  people  took  him  for  the  long  vanished  and  lamented  god 
Lono,  he  encouraged  them  in  the  delusion  for  the  sake  of  the 
limitless  power  it  gave  him  ;  but  during  the  famous  disturbance 
at  this  spot,  and  while  he  and  his  comrades  were  surrounded 
by  fifteen  thousand  maddened  savages,  he  received  a  hurt  and 
betrayed  his  earthly  origin  with  a  groan.  It  was  his  death- 
warrant.  Instantly  a  shout  went  up  :  "  He  groans ! — he  is  not 
a  god !"  So  they  closed  in  upon  him  and  dispatched  him. 

His  flesh  was  stripped  from  the  bones  and  burned  (except 
nine  pounds  of  it  which  were  sent  on  board  the  ships).  The 
heart  was  hung  up  in  a  native  hut,  where  it  was  found  and 
eaten  by  three  children,  who  mistook  it  for  the  heart  of  a  dog. 
One  of  these  children  grew  to  be  a  very  old  man,  and  died  in 
Honolulu  a  few  years  ago.  Some  of  Cook's  bones  were  recov 
ered  and  consigned  to  the  deep  by  the  officers  of  the  ships. 

Small  blame  should  attach  to  the  natives  for  the  killing  of 
Cook.  They  treated  him  well.  In  return,  he  abused  them. 
He  and  his  men  inflicted  bodily  injury  upon  many  of  them  at 
different  times,  and  killed  at  least  three  of  them  before  they 
oiTered  any  proportionate  retaliation. 

Near  the  shore  we  found  "  Cook's  Monument " — only  a  cocoa- 
nut  stump,  four  feet  high  and  about  a  foot  in  diameter  at  the 
butt.  It  had  lava  boulders  piled  around  its  base  to  hold  it  up 
and  keep  it  in  its  place,  and  it  was  entirely  sheathed  over,  from 
top  to  bottom,  with  rough,  discolored  sheets  of  copper,  such  as 
ships'  bottoms  are  coppered  with.  Each  sheet  had  a  rude 
inscription  scratched  upon  it — with  a  nail,  apparently — and  in 
every  case  the  execution  was  wretched.  Most  of  these  merely 
recorded  the  visits  of  British  naval  commanders  to  the  spot, 
but  one  of  them  bore  this  legend  : 

"  Near  this  spot  fell 
CAPTAIN  JAMES  COOK, 

The  Distinguished   Circumnavigator,  who  Discovered  these 
Islands  A.  D.  1778. 


516  THE    SLEEP    OF    THE    INNOCENT. 

After  Cook's  murder,  his  second  in  command,  on  board  tlie 
ship,  opened  fire  upon  the  swarms  of  natives  on  the  beach,  and 
one  of  his  cannon  balls  cut  this  cocoanut  tree  short  off  and  left 
this  monumental  stump  standing.  It  looked  sad  and  lonely 
enough  to  us,  out  there  in  the  rainy  twilight.  But  there  is  no 
other  monument  to  Captain  Cook.  True,  up  on  the  mountain 
side  we  had  passed  by  a  large  inclosure  like  an  ample  hog-pen, 
built  of  lava  blocks,  which  marks  the  spot  where  Cook's  flesh 
was  stripped  from  his  bones  and  burned ;  but  this  is  not  prop 
erly  a  monument,  since  it  was  erected  by  the  natives  themselves, 
and  less  to  do  honor  to  the  circumnavigator  than  for  the  sake 
of  convenience  in  roasting  him.  A  thing  like  a  guide-board 
was  elevated  above  this  pen  on  a  tall  pole,  and  formerly  there 
was  an  inscription  upon  it  describing  the  memorable  occurrence 
that  had  there  taken  place ;  but  the  sun  and  the  wind  have  long 
ago  so  defaced  it  as  to  render  it  illegible. 

Toward  midnight  a  fine  breeze  sprang  up  and  the  schooner 
soon  worked  herself  into  the  bay  and  cast  anchor.  The  boat 
came  ashore  for  us,  and  in  a  little  while  the  clouds  and  the 
rain  were  all  gone.  The  moon  was  beaming  tranquilly  down 
on  land  and  sea,  and  we  two  were  stretched  upon  the  deck 
sleeping  the  refreshing  sleep  and  dreaming  the  happy  dreams 
that  are  only  vouchsafed  to  the  weary  and  the  innocent. 


CHAPTER  LXXII. 

IN  the  breezy  morning  we  went  ashore  and  visited  the  ruined 
temple  of  the  last  god  Lono.  The  high  chief  cook  of  this 
temple — the  priest  who  presided  over  it  and  roasted  the  human 
sacrifices — was  uncle  to  Obookia,  and  at  one  time  th^t  youth 
was  an  apprentice-priest  under  him.  Obookia  was  a  young 
native  of  fine  mind,  who,  together  with  three  other  native  boys, 
was  taken  to  New  England  by  the  captain  of  a  whaleship  dur 
ing  the  reign  of  Kamehameha  I,  and  they  were  the  means  of 
attracting  the  attention  of  the  religious  world  to  their  country. 
This  resulted  in  the  sending  of  missionaries  there.  And  this 
Obookia  was  the  very  same  sensitive  savage  who  sat  down  on 
the  church  steps  and  wept  because  his  people  did  not  have  the 
Bible.  That  incident  has  been  very  elaborately  painted  in 
many  a  charming  Sunday  School  book — aye,  and  told  so  plain 
tively  and  so  tenderly  that  I  have  cried  over  it  in  Sunday 
School  myself,  on  general  principles,  although  at  a  time  when. 
I  did  not  know  much  and  could  not  understand  why  the  peo 
ple  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  needed  to  worry  so  much  about  it 
as  long  as  they  did  not  know  there  was  a  Bible  at  all. 

Obookia  was  converted  and  educated,  and  was  to  have  re 
turned  to  his  native  land  with  the  first  missionaries,  had  he 
lived.  The  other  native  youths  made  the  voyage,  and  two  of 
them  did  good  service,  but  the  third,  William  Kanui,  fell  from 
grace  afterward,  for  a  time,  and  when  the  gold  excitement 
broke  out  in  California  he  journeyed  thither  and  went  to  min- 


518  A    TEMPLE    BUILT    BY    GHOSTS. 

ing,  although  he  was  fifty  years  old.  He  succeeded  pretty 
well,  but  the  failure  of  Page,  Bacon  &  Co.  relieved  him  of  six 
thousand  dollars,  and  then,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  he  was 
a  bankrupt  in  his  old  age  and  he  resumed  service  in  the  pulpit 
again.  He  died  in  Honolulu  in  1864. 

Quite  a  broad  tract  of  land  near  the  temple,  extending  from 
the  sea  to  the  mountain  top,  was  sacred  to  the  god  Lono  in 
olden  times — so  sacred  that  if  a  common  native  set  his  sacrile 
gious  foot  upon  it  it  was  judicious  for  him  to  make  his  will, 
because  his  time  had  come.  He  might  go  around  it  by  water, 
but  he  could  not  cross  it.  It  was  well  sprinkled  with  pagan 
temples  and  stocked  with  awkward,  homely  idols  carved  out 
of  logs  of  wood.  There  was  a  temple  devoted  to  prayers  for 
rain — and  with  fine  sagacity  it  was  placed  at  a  point  so  well 
up  on  the  mountain  side  that  if  you  prayed  there  twenty-four 
times  a  day  for  rain  you  would  be  likely  to  get  it  every  time. 


THE  GHOSTLY  BUILDERS. 


You  would  seldom  get  to  your  Amen  before  you  would  have 
to  hoist  your  umbrella. 

And  there  was  a  large  temple  near  at  hand  which  was  built 
in  a  single  night,  in  the  midst  of  storm  and  thunder  and  rain, 
by  the  ghastly  hands  of  dead  men !  Tradition  says  that  by  tho 


A    BEVY    OF    FEMALE    BATHERS. 


519 


wierd  glare  of  the  lightning  a  noiseless  multitude  of  phantoms 
were  seen  at  their  strange  labor  far  up  the  mountain  side  at 
dead  of  night — flitting  hither  and  thither  and  bearing  great 
lava-blocks  clasped  in  their  nerveless  fingers — appearing  and 
disappearing  as  the  pallid  lustre  fell  upon  their  forms  and  faded 
away  again.  Even  to  this  day,  it  is  said,  the  natives  hold  this 
dread  structure  in  awe  and  reverence,  and  will  not  pass  by  it 
in  the  night. 

At  noon  I  observed  a  bevy  of  nude  native  young  ladies  bath- 
ing  in  the  sea,  and  went  and  sat  down  on  their  clothes  to  keep 
them  from  being  stolen.  I  begged  them  to  come  out,  for  the 
sea  was  rising  and  I  was  satisfied  that  they  were  running  some 
risk.  But  they  were  not  afraid,  and  presently  went  on  with 
their  sport.  They  were  finished  swimmers  and  divers,  and  en- 


ON  GUARD. 

joyed  themselves  to  the  last  degree.  They  swam  races,  splashed 
and  ducked  and  tumbled  each  other  about,  and  filled  the  air 
with  their  laughter.  It  is  said  that  the  first  thing  an  Islander, 
learns  is  how  to  swim ;  learning  to  walk  being  a  matter  of 
smaller  consequence,  comes  afterward.  One  hears  tales  of  na 
tive  men  and  women  swimming  ashore  from  vessels  many 
miles  at  sea — more  miles,  indeed,  than  I  dare  vouch  for  or  even 
mention.  And  they  tell  of  a  native  diver  who  went  down  in 
thirty  or  forty-foot  waters  and  brought  up  an  anvil !  I  tkink 


520  THE    IDOL    LONG. 

he  swallowed  the  anvil  afterward,  if  my  memory  serves  me. 
However  I  will  not  urge  this  point. 

I  have  spoken,  several  times,  of  the  god  Lono — I  may  as 
well  furnish  two  or  three  sentences  concerning  him. 

The  idol  the  natives  worshiped  for  him  was  a  slender,  unor- 
namented  staff  twelve  feet  long.  Tradition  says  he  was  a  fa 
vorite  god  on  the  Island  of  Hawaii — a  great  king  who  had 
been  deified  for  meritorious  services — just  our  own  fashion  of 
rewarding  heroes,  with  the  difference  that  we  would  have  made 
him  a  Postmaster  instead  of  a  god,  no  doubt.  In  an  angry 
moment  he  slew  his  wife,  a  goddess  named  Kaikilani  Aiii. 
Remorse  of  conscience  drove  him  mad,  and  tradition  presents 
us  the  singular  spectacle  of  a  god  traveling  "  on  the  shoulder ;" 
for  in  his  gnawing  grief  he  wandered  about  from  place  to  place 
boxing  and  wrestling  with  all  whom  he  met.  Of  course  this 
pastime  soon  lost  its  novelty,  inasmuch  as  it  must  necessarily 
have  been  the  case  that  when  so  powerful  a  deity  sent  a  frail 
human  opponent  "  to  grass "  he  never  came  back  any  more. 
Therefore,  he  instituted  games  called  makahiki,  and  ordered 
that  they  should  be  held  in  his  honor,  and  then  sailed  for  for 
eign  lands  on  a  three-cornered  raft,  stating  that  he  would  return 
some  day — and  that  was  the  last  of  Lono.  He  was  never  seen 
any  more ;  his  raft  got  swamped,  perhaps.  But  the  people 
always  expected  his  return,  and  thus  they  were  easily  led  to 
accept  Captain  Cook  as  the  restored  god. 

Some  of  the  old  natives  believed  Cook  was  Lono  to  the  day 
of  their  death ;  but  many  did  not,  for  they  could  not  under 
stand  how  he  could  die  if  he  was  a  god. 

Only  a  mile  or  so  from  Kealakekua  Bay  is  a  spot  of  historic 
interest — the  place  where  the  last  battle  was  fought  for  idolatry. 
Of  course  we  visited  it,  and  came  away  as  wise  as  most  people 
do  who  go  and  gaze  upon  such  mementoes  of  the  past  when  in 
an  unreflective  mood. 

While  the  first  missionaries  were  on  their  way  around  the 
Horn,  the  idolatrous  customs  which  had  obtained  in  the  island, 
as  far  back  as  tradition  reached  were  suddenly  broken  up.  Old 


INFLUENCE    OF    WOMEN    AND    WHISKEY. 


521 


Kamehameha  L,  was  dead,  and  his  son,  Liholiho,  the  new  King 
was  a  free  liver,  a  roystering,  dissolute  fellow,  and  hated  the 
restraints  of  the  ancient  tabu.  His  assistant  in  the  Govern 
ment,  Kaahumami,  the  Queen  dowager,  was  proud  and  high- 
spirited,  and  hated  the  tabu  because  it  restricted  the  privileges 
of  her  sex  and  degraded  all  women  very  nearly  to  the  level  of 
brutes.  So  the  case  stood.  Liholiho  had  half  a  mind  to  put 
his  foot  down,  Kaahumahu  had  a  whole  mind  to  badger  him 
into  doing  it,  and  whiskey  did  the  rest.  It  was  probably  the 
rest.  It  was  probably  the  first  time  whiskey  ever  prominently 
figured  as  an  aid  to  civilization.  Liholiho  came  up  to  Kailua 
as  drunk  as  a  piper,  and  attended  a  great  feast ;  the  determined 
Queen  spurred  his  drunken  courage  up  to  a  reckless  pitch,  and 
then,  while  all  the  multitude  stared  in  blank  dismay,  he  moved 
deliberately  forward  and  sat  down  with  the  women!  They 


THE   TABU  BROKEN. 


saw  him  eat  from  the  same  vessel  with  them,  and  were  appalled ! 
Terrible  moments  drifted  slowly  by,  and  still  the  King  ate, 


522  A    FIERCE    CONFLICT    FOR    IDOLATRY. 

still  he  lived,  still  the  lightnings  of  the  insulted  gods  were 
withheld  !  Then  conviction  came  like  a  revelation — the  super 
stitions  of  a  hundred  generations  passed  from  before  the  people 
like  a  cloud,  and  a  shout  went  up,  "  the  tabu  is  broken  !  the 
tabu  is  broken  !" 

Thus  did  King  Liholiho  and  his  dreadful  whiskey  preach  the 
first  sermon  and  prepare  the  way  for  the  new  gospel  that  was 
speeding  southward  over  the  waves  of  the  Atlantic. 

The  tabu  broken  and  destruction  failing  to  follow  the  awful 
sacrilege,  the  people,  with  that  childlike  precipitancy  which  has 
always  characterized  them,  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  their 
gods  were  a  weak  and  wretched  swindle,  just  as  they  formerly 
jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  Captain  Cook  was  no  god,  merely 
because  he  groaned,  and  promptly  killed  him  without  stopping 
to  inquire  whether  a  god  might  not  groan  as  well  as  a  man  if 
it  suited  his  convenience  to  do  it ;  and  satisfied  that  the  idols 
were  powerless  to  protect  themselves  they  went  to  work  at  once 
and  pulled  them  down — hacked  them  to  pieces — applied  the 
torch — annihilated  them  ! 

The  pagan  priests  were  furious.  And  well  they  might  be ; 
they  had  held  the  fattest  offices  in  the  land,  and  now  they  were 
beggared;  they  had  been  great — they  had  stood  above  the 
chiefs — and  now  they  were  vagabonds.  They  raised  a  revolt ; 
they  scared  a  number  of  people  into  joining  their  standard,  and 
Bekuokalani,  an  ambitious  offshoot  of  royalty,  was  easily  per 
suaded  to  become  their  leader. 

In  the  first  skirmish  the  idolaters  triumphed  over  the  royal 
army  sent  against  them,  and  full  of  confidence  they  resolved 
to  march  upon  Kailua.  The  King  sent  an  envoy  to  try  and 
conciliate  them,  and  came  very  near  being  an  envoy  short  by 
the  operation ;  the  savages  not  only  refused  to  listen  to  him, 
but  wanted  to  kill  him.  So  the  King  sent  his  men  forth  under 
Major  General  Kalaimoku  and  the  two  hosts  met  at  Kuamoo. 
The  battle  was  long  and  fierce — men  and  women  fighting  side 
by  side,  as  was  the  custom — and  when  the  day  was  done  the 
rebels  were  flying  in  every  direction  in  hopeless  panic,  and 
idolatry  and  the  tabu  were  dead  in  the  land ! 


AN    OPPORTUNE    ARRIVAL. 


523 


The  royalists  marched  gayly  home  to  Kailua  glorifying  the 
new  dispensation.  "  There  is  no  power  in  the  gods,"  said  they ; 
"  they  are  a  vanity  and  a  lie.  The  army  with  idols  was  weak ; 
the  army  without  idols  was  strong  and  victorious !" 

The  nation  was  without  a  religion. 

The  missionary  ship  arrived  in  safety  shortly  afterward,  timed 
by  providential  exactness  to  meet  the  emergency,  and  the  Gos 
pel  was  planted  as  in  a  virgin  soil. 


CHAPTER    LXXIII. 

AT  noon,  we  hired  a  Kanaka  to  take  us  down  to  the  ancient 
ruins  at  Honaunau  in  his  canoe — price  two  dollars — rea 
sonable  enough,  for  a  sea  voyage  of  eight  miles,  counting  both 
ways. 

The  native  canoe  is  an  irresponsible  looking  contrivance.  I 
cannot  think  of  anything  to  liken  it  to  but  a  boy's  sled  runner 
hollowed  out,  and  that  does  not  quite  convey  the  correct  idea. 
It  is  about  fifteen  feet  long,  high  and  pointed  at  both  ends,  is  a 
foot  and  a  half  or  two  feet  deep,  and  so  narrow  that  if  you 
wedged  a  fat  man  into  it  you  might  not  get  him  out  again.  It 
sits  on  top  of  the  water  like  a  duck,  but  it  has  an  outrig 
ger  and  does  not  upset  easily,  if  you  keep  still.  This  outrig 
ger  is  formed  of  two  long  bent  sticks  like  plow  handles,  which 
project  from  one  side,  and  to  their  outer  ends  is  bound  a  curved 
beam  composed  of  an  extremely  light  wood,  which  skims  along 
the  surface  of  the  water  and  thus  saves  you  from  an  upset  011 
that  side,  while  the  outrigger's  weight  is  not  so  easily  lifted  as 
to  make  an  upset  on  the  other  side  a  thing  to  be  greatly  feared. 
Still,  until  one  gets  used  to  sitting  perched  upon  this  knife- 
blade,  he  is  apt  to  reason  within  himself  that  it  would  be  more 
comfortable  if  there  were  just  an  outrigger  or  so  on  the  other 
side  also. 

I  had  the  bow  seat,  and  Billings  sat  amidships  and  faced  the 
Kanaka,  who  occupied  the  stern  of  the  craft  and  did  the  pad 
dling.  With  the  first  stroke  the  trim  shell  of  a  thing  shot  out 


A    RIDE    IN    A    CANOE.  525 

from  the  shore  like  an  arrow.  There  was  not  much  to  see. 
While  we  were  on  the  shallow  water  of  the  reef,  it  was  pastime 
to  look  down  into  the  limpid  depths  at  the  large  bunches  of 
branching  coral — the  unique  shrubbery  of  the  sea.  We  lost 
that,  though,  when  we  got  out  into  the  dead  blue  water  of  the 
deep.  But  we  had  the  picture  of  the  surf,  then,  dashing 
angrily  against  the  crag-bound  shore  and  sending  a  foaming 
spray  high  into  the  air.  There  was  interest  in  this  beetling 
border,  too,  for  it  was  honey-coinbed  with  quaint  caves  and  arches 


SURF-BATHING — SUCCESS. 

and  tunnels,  and  had  a  rude  semblance  of  the  dilapidated  architec 
ture  of  ruined  keeps  and  castles  rising  out  of  the  restless  sea. 
When  this  novelty  ceased  to  be  a  novelty,  we  turned  our  eyes 
shoreward  and  gazed  at  the  long  mountain  with  its  rich  green 
forests  stretching  up  into  the  curtaining  clouds,  and  at  the 
specks  of  houses  in  the  rearward  distance  and  the  diminished 
schooner  riding  sleepily  at  anchor.  And  when  these  grew  tire 
some  we  dashed  boldly  into  the  midst  of  a  school  of  huge, 


526 


NATIVE    SURF    BATHING. 


beastly  porpoises  engaged  at  their  eternal  game  of  arching  over 
a  wave  and  disappearing,  and  then  doing  it  over  again  and  keep 
ing  it  up — always  circling  over,  in  that  way,  like  so  many  well- 
submerged  wheels.  But  the  porpoises  wheeled  themselves 
away,  and  then  we  were  thrown  upon  our  own  resources.  It 
did  not  take  many  minutes  to  discover  that  the  sun  was  blazing 
like  a  bonfire,  and  that  the  weather  was  of  a  melting  tempera 
ture.  It  had  a  drowsing  effect,  too. 

In  one  place  we  came  upon  a  large  company  of  naked  natives, 
of  both  sexes  and  all  ages,  amusing  themselves  with  the 
national  pastime  of  surf-bathing.  Each  heathen  would  paddle 
three  or  four  hundred  yards  out  to  sea,  (taking  a  short  board 
with  him),  then  face  the  shore  and  wait  for  a  particularly  pro 
digious  billow  to  come  along ;  at  the  right  moment  he  would 
fling  his  board  upon  its  foamy  crest  and  himself  upon  the  board, 
and  here  he  would  come  whizzing  by  like  a  bombshell !  It  did 
not  seem  that  a  lightning  express  train  could  shoot  along  at  a 
more  hair-lifting  speed.  I  tried  surf-bathing  once,  subsequently, 
but  made  a  failure  of  it.  I  got  the  board  placed  right,  and  at 
the  right  moment,  too ;  but  missed  the  connection  myself. — The 
board  struck  the  shore  in 
three  quarters  of  a  second, 
without  any  cargo,  and  I 
struck  the  bottom  about  the 
same  time,  with  a  couple  of 
barrels  of  water  in  me. 
None  but  natives  ever  mas 
ter  the  art  of  surf-bathing 
thoroughly. 

At  the  end  of  an  hour,  we 
had  made  the  four  miles,  and 
landed  on  a  level  point  of 

land,  upon  which  was  a  wide  SURF-BATHING — FAILURE. 

extent  of  old  ruins,  with  many  a  tall  cocoanut  tree  growing 
among  them.  Here  was  the  ancient  City  of  Refuge — a  vast 
inclosure,  whose  stone  walls  were  twenty  feet  thick  at  the  base, 


ESCAPE    FROM    VENGEANCE. 


527 


and  fifteen  feet  high  ;  an  oblong  square,  a  thousand  and  forty 
feet  one  way  and  a  fraction  under  seven  hundred  the  other. 
Within  this  inclosure,  in  early  times,  has  been  three  rude 
temples ;  each  two  hundred  and  ten  feet  long  by  one  hundred 
wide,  and  thirteen  high. 

In  those  days,  if  a  man  killed  another  anywhere  on  the  island 
the  relatives  were  privileged  to  take  the  murderer's  life ;  and 
then  a  chase  for  life  and  liberty  began — the  outlawed  criminal 
flying  through  pathless  forests  and  over  mountain  and  plain, 
with  his  hopes  fixed  upon  the  protecting  walls  of  the  City  of 
Hefuge,  and  the  avenger  of  blood  following  hotly  after  him  ! 
Sometimes  the  race  was  kept  up  to  the  very  gates  of  the  tem 
ple,  and  the  panting  pair  sped  through  long  files  of  excited 
natives,  who  watched  the  contest  with  flashing  eye  and  dilated 
nostril,  encouraging  the  hunted  refugee  with  sharp,  inspiriting 
ejaculations,  and  sending  up  a  ringing  shout  of  exultation  when 
the  saving  gates  closed  upon  him  and  the  cheated  pursuer  sank 


THB  CITY  OP  REFUGE. 

exhausted  at  the  threshold.  But  sometimes  the  flying  criminal 
fell  under  the  hand  of  the  avenger  at  the  very  door,  when  one 
more  brave  stride,  one  more  brief  second  of  time  would  have 


528  PLEA    OF    EXECUTION. 

brought  his  feet  upon  the  sacred  ground  and  barred  him  against 
all  harm.  Where  did  these  isolated  pagans  get  this  idea  of  a 
City  of  Refuge — this  ancient  Oriental  custom  ? 

This  old  sanctuary  was  sacred  to  all — even  to  rebels  in  arms 
and  invading  armies.  Once  within  its  walls,  and  confession 
made  to  the  priest  and  absolution  obtained,  the  wretch  with  a 
price  upon  his  head  could  go  forth  without  fear  and  without 
danger — he  was  tabu,  and  to  harm  him  was  death.  The  routed 
rebels  in  the  lost  battle  for  idolatry  fled  to  this  place  to  claim 
sanctuary,  and  many  were  thus  saved. 

Close  to  the  corner  of  the  great  inclosure  is  a  round  structure 
of  stone,  some  six  or  eight  feet  high,  with  a  level  top  about 
ten  or  twelve  in  diameter.  This  wras  the  place  of  execution. 
A  high  palisade  of  cocoanut  piles  shut  out  the  cruel  scenes 
from  the  vulgar  multitude.  Here  criminals  were  killed,  the 
flesh  stripped  from  the  bones  and  burned,  and  the  bones  secre 
ted  in  holes  in  the  body  of  the  structure.  If  the  man  had  been 
guilty  of  a  high  crime,  the  entire  corpse  was  burned. 

The  walls  of  the  temple  are  a  study.  The  same  food  for 
speculation  that  is  offered  the  visitor  to  the  Pyramids  of  Egypt 
he  will  find  here — the  mystery  of  how  they  were  constructed 
by  a  people  unacquainted  with  science  and  mechanics.  The 
natives  have  no  invention  of  their  own  for  hoisting  heavy 
weights,  they  had  no  beasts  of  burden,  and  they  have  never 
even  shown  any  knowledge  of  the  properties  of  the  lever. 
Yet  some  of  the  lava  blocks  quarried  out,  brought  over  rough, 
broken  ground,  and  built  into  this  wall,  six  or  seven  feet  from 
the  ground,  are  of  prodigious  size  and  would  weigh  tons.  How 
did  they  transport  and  how  raise  them  ? 

i  ;  Both  the  inner  and  outer  surfaces  of  the  walls  present  a 
smooth  front  and  are  very  creditable  specimens  of  masonry. 
The  blocks  are  of  all  manner  of  shapes  and  sizes,  but  yet  are 
fitted  together  with  the  neatest  exactness.  The  gradual  nar 
rowing  of  the  wall  from  the  base  upward  is  accurately  preserved. 

£To  cement  was  used,  but  the  edifice  is  firm  and  compact  and 
is  capable  of  resisting  storm  and  decay  for  centuries.  "Who 


WONDERFUL    ROCKS    AND    THEIR    LEGIONS.      529 


built  this  temple,  and  how  was  it  built,  and  when,  are  myste 
ries  that  may  never  be  unraveled. 

Outside  of  these  ancient  walls  lies  a  sort  of  coffin-shaped 
Btone  eleven  feet  four  inches  long  and  three  feet  square  at  the 
small  end  (it  would  weigh  a  few  thousand  pounds),  which  the 
high  chief  who  held  sway  over  this  district  many  centuries  ago 
brought  thither  on  his  shoulder  one  day  to  use  as  a  lounge  ! 
This  circumstance  is  established  by  the  most  reliable  traditions. 
He  used  to  lie  down  on  it,  in  his  indolent  way,  and  keep  an 
eye  on  his  subjects  at  work  for  him  and  see  that  there  was  no 
"  soldiering  "  done.  And  no  doubt  there  was  not  any  done  to 
speak  of,  because  he  was  a  man  of  that  sort  of  build  that  incites 
to  attention  to  business  on  the  part  of  an  employee.  He  was 
fourteen  or  fifteen  feet  high.  When  he  stretched  himself  at 
full  length  on  his  lounge,  his  legs  hung  down  over  the  end,  and 
when  he  snored  he  woke  the  dead.  These  facts  are  all  attested 
by  irrefragable  tradition. 

On  the  other  side  of  the 
temple  is  a  monstrous  seven- 
ton  rock,  eleven  feet  long, 
seven  feet  wide  and  three  feet 
thick.  It  is  raised  a  foot  or  a 


TUB  QUEEN'S  ROCK. 

foot  and  a  half  above  the  ground,  and  rests  upon  half  a  dozen 
little  stony  pedestals.  The  same  old  fourteen-footer  brought 
it  down  from  the  mountain,  merely  for  fun  (he  had  his  own 


530  LAVA    CURIOSITIES. 

notions  about  fun),  and  propped  it  up  as  we  find  it  now  and 
as  others  may  find  it  a  century  hence,  for  it  would  take  a  score 
of  horses  to  budge  it  from  its  position.  They  say  that  fifty 
or  sixty  years  ago  the  proud  Queen  Ivaahumanu  used  to  fiy  to 
this  rock  for  safety,  whenever  she  had  been  making  trouble 
with  her  fierce  husband,  and  hide  under  it  until  his  wrath  was 
appeased.  But  these  Kanakas  will  lie,  and  this  statement  is 
one  of  their  ablest  efforts — for  Kaahumanu  was  six  feet  high — 
she  was  bulky — she  was  built  like  an  ox — and  she  could  no 
more  have  squeezed  herself  under  that  rock  than  she  could 
have  passed  between  the  cylinders  of  a  sugar  mill.  What  could 
she  gain  by  it,  even  if  she  succeeded  1  To  be  chased  and  abused 
by  a  savage  husband  could  not  be  otherwise  than  humiliating 
to  her  high  spirit,  yet  it  could  never  make  her  feel  so  flat  as  an 
hour's  repose  under  that  rock  would. 

We  walked  a  mile  over  a  raised  macadamized  road  of  uni 
form  width  ;  a  road  paved  with  flat  stones  and  exhibiting  in  its 
every  detail  a  considerable  degree  of  engineering  skill.  Some 
say  that  that  wise  old  pagan,  Kamehameha  I.  planned  and 
built  it,  but  others  say  it  was  built  so  long  before  his  time  that 
the  knowledge  of  who  constructed  it  has  passed  out  of  the  tra 
ditions.  In  either  case,  however,  as  the  handiwork  of  an 
untaught  and  degraded  race  it  is  a  thing  of  pleasing  interest. 
The  stones  are  worn  and  smooth,  and  pushed  apart  in  places, 
so  that  the  road  has  the  exact  appearance  of  those  ancient  paved 
highways  leading  out  of  Home  which  one  sees  in  pictures. 

The  object  of  our  tramp  was  to  visit  a  great  natural  curiosity 
at  the  base  of  the  foothills — a  congealed  cascade  of  lava.  Some 
old  forgotten  volcanic  eruption  sent  its  broad  river  of  fire  down 
the  mountain  side  here,  and  it  poured  down  in  a  great  torrent 
from  an  overhanging  bluff  some  fifty  feet  high  to  the  ground 
below.  The  flaming  torrent  cooled  in  the  winds  from  the  sea, 
and  remains  there  to-day,  all  seamed,  and  frothed  and  rippled 
a  petrified  ^Niagara.  It  is  very  picturesque,  and  withal  so  nat 
ural  that  one  might  almost  imagine  it  still  flowed.  A  smaller 
stream  trickled  over  the  cliff  and  built  up  an  isolated  pyramid 


A    PETRIFIED    NIAGARA.  531 

nbont  thirty  feet  high,  which  has  the  semblance  of  a  mass  of 
large  gnarled  and  knotted  vines  and  roots  and  stems  intricately 
twisted  and  woven  together. 

We  passed  in  behind  the  cascade  and  the  pyramid,  and  found 
the  bluff  pierced  by  several  cavernous  tunnels,  whose  crooked 
courses  we  followed  a  long  distance. 

Two  of  these  winding  tunnels  stand  as  proof  of  Kature's 
mining  abilities.  Their  floors  are  level,  they  are  seven  feet 
wide,  and  their  roofs  are  gently  arched.  Their  height  is  not  uni 
form,  however.  We  passed  through  one  a  hundred  feet  long, 
which  leads  through  a  spur  of  the  hill  and  opens  out  well  up 
in  the  sheer  wall  of  a  precipice  whose  foot  rests  in  the  waves 
of  the  sea.  It  is  a  commodious  tunnel,  except  that  there  are 
occasional  places  in  it  where  one  must  stoop  to  pass  under. 
The  roof  is  lava,  of  course,  and  is  thickly  studded  with  little 
lava-pointed  icicles  an  inch  long,  which  hardened  as  they  drip- 
pod.  They  project  as  closely  together  as  the  iron  teeth  of  a 
com-sheller,  and  if  one  will  stand  up  straight  and  walk  any 
diytance  there,  he  can  get  his  hair  ccmbed  free  of  charge. 


CHAPTER  LXXIV. 

"T TJTE  got  back  to  the  schooner  in  good  time,  and  then  sailed 
V  T  down  to  Kau,  where  we  disembarked  and  took  final 
leave  of  the  vessel.  Next  day  we  bought  horses  and  bent  our 
way  over  the  summer-clad  mountain-terraces,  toward  the  great 
volcano  of  Kilauea  (Ke-low-way-ah).  We  made  nearly  a  two 
days'  journey  of  it,  but  that  was  on  account  of  laziness.  To 
ward  sunset  on  the  second  day,  we  reached  an  elevation  of  some 
four  thousand  feet  above  sea  level,  and  as  we  picked  our  careful 
way  through  billowy  wastes  of  lava  long  generations  ago  stricken 
dead  and  cold  in  the  climax  of  its  tossing  fury,  we  began  to 
come  upon  signs  of  the  near  presence  of  the  volcano — signs  in 
the  nature  of  ragged  fissures  that  discharged  jets  of  sulphurous 
vapor  into  the  air,  hot  from  the  molten  ocean  down  in  the  bow 
els  of  the  mountain. 

Shortly  the  crater  came  into  view.  I  have  seen  Yesuvius 
since,  but  it  was  a  mere  toy,  a  child's  volcano,  a  soup-kettle, 
compared  to  this.  Mount  Vesuvius  is  a  shapely  cone  thirty-six 
hundred  feet  high ;  its  crater  an  inverted  cone  only  three  hun 
dred  feet  deep,  and  not  more  than  a  thousand  feet  in  diameter, 
if  as  much  as  that ;  its  fires  meagre,  modest,  and  docile. — But 
here  was  a  vast,  perpendicular,  wralled  cellar,  nine  hundred  feet 
deep  in  some  places,  thirteen  hundred  in  others,  level-floored, 
and  ten  miles  in  circumference  !  Here  was  a  yawning  pit 
upon  whose  floor  the  armies  of  Russia  could  camp,  and  have 
room  to  spare. 

Perched  upon  the  edge  of  the  crater,  at  the  opposite  end 


A    VISIT    TO    THE    CRATER. 


533 


from  where  we  stood,  was  a  small  look-out  house — say  three 
miles  away.  It  assisted  us,  by  comparison,  to  comprehend 
and  appreciate  the  great  depth  of  the  basin — it  looked  like  a 
tiny  martin-box  clinging  at  the  eaves  of  a  cathedral.  After 
some  little  time  spent  in  resting  and  looking  and  ciphering,  we 
hurried  on  to  the  hotel. 

By  the  path  it  is  half  a  mile  from  the  Volcano  House  to  the 
lookout-house.  After  a  hearty  supper  we  waited  until  it  was 
thoroughly  dark  and  then  started  to  the  crater.  The  first  glance 
in  that  direction  revealed  a  scene  of  wild  beauty.  There  was 
a  heavy  fog  over  the  crater  and  it  was  splendidly  illuminated 
by  the  glare  from  the  fires  below.  The  illumination  was  two 
miles  wide  and  a  mile  high,  perhaps ;  and  if  you  ever,  on  a 
dark  night  and  at  a  distance  beheld  the  light  from  thirty  or 
forty  blocks  of  distant  build 
ings  all  on  fire  at  once,  re 
flected  strongly  against  over 
hanging  clouds,  you  can 
form  a  fair  idea  of  what  this 
looked  like. 

A  colossal  column  of  cloud 
towered  to  a  great  height  in 
the  air  immediately  above 
the  crater,  and  the  outer 
swell  of  every  one  of  its  vast 
folds  was  dyed  with  a  rich 
crimson  luster,  which  was 
subdued  to  a  pale  rose  tint 
in  the  depressions  between. 
It  glowed  like  a  muffled 
torch  and  stretched  upward 
to  a  dizzy  height  toward  the 

.,t  T      ,,  ,    ,      .,      .  THB   PILLAlt    OF   FIKE. 

zenith.      I   thought  it  just 

possible  that  its  like  had  not  been  seen  since  the  children  of 
Israel  wandered  on  their  long  march  through  the  desert  so 
many  centuries  ago  over  a  path  illuminated  by  the  mysterious 


534:  THE    FLOOR    OF    THE    ABYSS. 

"  pillar  of  fire."  And  I  was  sure  that  I  now  had  a  vivid  con 
ception  of  what  the  majestic  "pillar  of  fire"  was  like,  which 
almost  amounted  to  a  revelation. 

Arrived  at  the  little  thatched  lookout  house,  we  rested  our 
elbows  on  the  railing  in  front  and  looked  abroad  over  the  wide 
crater  and  down  over  the  sheer  precipice  at  the  seething  fires 
beneath  us.  The  view  was  a  startling  improvement  on  my 
daylight  experience.  I  turned  to  see  the  effect  on  the  balance 
of  the  company  and  found  the  reddest-faced  set  of  men  I  almost 
ever  saw.  In  the  strong  light  every  countenance  glowed  like 
red-hot  iron,  every  shoulder  was  suffused  with  crimson  and 
shaded  rearward  into  dingy,  shapeless  obscurity !  The  place 
below  looked  like  the  infernal  regions  and  these  men  like 
half-cooled  devils  just  come  up  on  a  furlough. 

I  turned  my  eyes  upon  the  volcano  again.  The  "cellar" 
was  tolerably  well  lighted  up.  For  a  mile  and  a  half  in  front 
of  us  and  half  a  mile  on  either  side,  the  floor  of  the  abyss 
was  magnificently  illuminated ;  beyond  these  limits  the  mists 
hung  down  their  gauzy  curtains  and  cast  a  deceptive  gloom 
over  all  that  made  the  twinkling  fires  in  the  remote  corners  of 
the  crater  seem  countless  leagues  removed — made  them  seem 
like  the  camp-fires  of  a  great  army  far  away.  Here  was 
room  for  the  imagination  to  work !  You  could  imagine 
those  lights  the  width  of  a  continent  away — and  that  hid 
den  under  the  intervening  darkness  were  hills,  and  winding 
rivers,  and  weary  wastes  of  plain  and  desert — and  even  then 
the  tremendous  vista  stretched  on,  and  on,  and  on  ! — to  the  fires 
and  far  beyond !  You  could  not  compass  it — it  was  the  idea 
of  eternity  made  tangible — and  the  longest  end  of  it  made  vis 
ible  to  the  naked  eye ! 

The  greater  part  of  the  vast  floor  of  the  desert  under  us  was  as 
black  as  ink,  and  apparently  smooth  and  level ;  but  over  a  mile 
square  of  it  was  ringed  and  streaked  and  striped  with  a  thousand 
branching  streams  of  liquid  and  gorgeously  brilliant  fire !  It 
looked  like  a  colossal  railroad  map  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
done  in  chain  lightning  on  a  midnight  sky.  Imagine  it — im- 


MAGNIFICENT    SPECTACLE. 


535 


aginc  a  coal-black  sky  shivered  into  a  tangled  net-work  of  angry 
fire! 

Here  and  there  were  gleaming  holes  a  hundred  feet  in  diam 
eter,  broken  in  the  dark  crust,  and  in  thorn  the  melted  lava — 
the  color  a  dazzling  white  just  tinged  with  yellow — was  boiling 


THE   CKATER. 


and  surging  furiously  ;  and  from  these  holes  branched  number 
less  bright  torrents  in  many  directions,  like  the  spokes  of  a 
wheel,  and  kept  a  tolerably  straight  course  for  a  while  and  then 


536  A    LAKE    OF    FIRE. 

swept  round  in  huge  rainbow  curves,  or  made  a  long  succession 
of  sharp  worm-fence  angles,  which  looked  precisely  like  the 
fiercest  jagged  lightning.  These  streams  met  other  streams, 
and  they  mingled  with  and  crossed  and  recrossed  each  other  in 
every  conceivable  direction,  like  skate  tracks  on  a  popular  skat 
ing  ground.  Sometimes  streams  twenty  or  thirty  feet  wide 
flowed  from  the  holes  to  some  distance  without  dividing — and 
through  the  opera-glasses  we  could  see  that  they  ran  clown 
small,  steep  hills  and  were  genuine  cataracts  of  fire,  white  at 
their  source,  but  soon  cooling  and  turning  to  the  richest  red, 
grained  with  alternate  lines  of  black  and  gold.  Every  now 
and  then  masses  of  the  dark  crust  broke  away  and  floated  slowly 
down  these  streams  like  rafts  down  a  river.  Occasionally  the 
molten  lava  flowing  under  the  superincumbent  crust  broke 
through — split  a  dazzling  streak,  from  five  hundred  to  a  thou 
sand  feet  long,  like  a  sudden  flash  of  lightning,  and  then  acre 
after  acre  of  the  cold  lava  parted  into  fragments,  turned  up 
edgewise  like  cakes  of  ice  when  a  great  river  breaks  up,  plunged 
downward  and  were  swallowed  in  the  crimson  cauldron.  Then 
the  wide  expanse  of  the  "  thaw  "  maintained  a  ruddy  glow  for 
a  while,  but  shortly  cooled  and  became  black  and  level  again. 
During  a  "  thaw,"  every  dismembered  cake  was  marked  by  a 
glittering  white  border  which  was  superbly  shaded  inward  by 
aurora  borealis  rays,  which  were  a  flaming  yellow  where  they 
joined  the  white  border,  and  from  thence  toward  their  points 
tapered  into  glowing  crimson,  then  into  a  rich,  pale  carmine, 
and  finally  into  a  faint  blush  that  held  its  own  a  moment  and 
then  dimmed  and  turned  black.  Some  of  the  streams  preferred 
to  mingle  together  in  a  tangle  of  fantastic  circles,  and  then  they 
looked  something  like  the  confusion  of  ropes  one  sees  on  a 
ship's  deck  when  she  has  just  taken  in  sail  and  dropped  anchor 
— provided  one  can  imagine  those  ropes  on  fire. 

Through  the  glasses,  the  little  fountains  scattered  about  looked 
very  beautiful.  They  boiled,  and  coughed,  and  spluttered,  and 
discharged  sprays  of  stringy  red  fire — of  about  the  consistency 
pf  mush,  for  instance — from  ten  to  fifteen  feet  into  the  air, 


HISSING    OF    THE    BUBBLING    LAVA.  537 

along  with  a  shower  of  brilliant  white  sparks — a  quaint  and 
unnatural  mingling  of  gouts  of  blood  and  snow-flakes  ! 

We  had  circles  and  serpents  and  streaks  of  lightning  all 
twined  and  wreathed  and  tied  together,  without  a  break 
throughout  an  area  more  than  a  mile  square  (that  amount  of 
ground  was  covered,  though  it  was  not  strictly  "  square  "),  and 
it  was  with  a  feeling  of  placid  exultation  that  we  reflected  that 
many  years  had  elapsed  since  any  visitor  had  seen  such  a  splen 
did  display — since  any  visitor  had  seen  anything  more  than  the 
now  snubbed  and  insignificant  "  North  "  and  "  South  "  lakes 
in  action.  We  had  been  reading  old  files  of  Hawaiian  news 
papers  and  the  "  Record  Book "  at  the  Yolcano  House,  and 
were  posted. 

I  could  see  the  North  Lake  lying  out  on  the  black  floor 
away  off  in  the  outer  edge  of  our  panorama,  and  knitted  to  it 
by  a  web-work  of  lava  streams.  In  its  individual  capacity  it 
looked  very  little  more  respectable  than  a  schoolhouse  on  fire. 
True,  it  w:;s  about  nine  hundred  feet  long  and  two  or  three 
hundred  wide,  but  then,  under  the  present  circumstances,  it 
necessarily  appeared  rather  insignificant,  and  besides  it  wras  so 
distant  from  us. 

I  forgot  to  say  that  the  noise  made  by  the  bubbling  lava  is 
not  great,  heard  as  we" heard  it  from  our  lofty  perch.  It  makes 
three  distinct  sounds — a  rushing,  a  hissing,  and  a  coughing  or 
puffing  sound ;  and  if  you  stand  on  the  brink  and  close  your 
eyes  it  is  no  trick  at  all  to-  imagine  that  you  are  sweeping  down 
a  river  on  a  large  low-pressure  steamer,  and  that  you  hear  the 
hissirg  of  the  steam  about  her  boilers,  the  puffing  from  her 
escape-pipes  and  the  churning  rush  of  the  water  abaft  her 
wheels.  The  smell  of  sulphur  is  strong,  but  not  unpleasant  to 
a  sinner. 

We  left  the  lookout  house  at  ten  o'clock  in  a  half  cooked 
condition,  because  of  the  heat  from  Pele's  furnaces,  and  wrap 
ping  up  in  blankets,  for  the  night  was  cold,  we  returned  to  our 
Hotel. 


CHAPTER  LXXY. 

THE  next  night  was  appointed  for  a  visit  to  the  bottom  of 
the  crater,  for  we  desired  to  traverse  its  floor  and  see  the 
"  North  Lake  "  (of  fire)  which  lay  two  miles  away,  toward  the 
further  wall.  After  dark  half  a  dozen  of  us  set  out,  with  lan 
terns  and  native  guides,  and  climbed  down  a  crazy,  thousand- 
foot  pathway  in  a  crevice  fractured  in  the  crater  wall,  and 
reached  the  bottom  in  safety. 

The  irruption  of  the  previous  evening  had  spent  its  force 
and  the  floor  looked  black  and  cold  ;  but  when  we  ran  out  upon 
it  we  found  it  hot  yet,  to  the  feet,  and  it  was  likewise  riven 
with  crevices  which  revealed  the  underlying  fires  gleaming 
vindictively.  A  neighboring  cauldron  was  threatening  to  over 
flow,  and  this  added  to  the  dubiousness  of  the  situation.  So 
the  native  guides  refused  to  continue  the  venture,  and  then 
every  body  deserted  except  a  stranger  named  Marlette.  He 
said  he  had  been  in  the  crater  a  dozen  times  in  daylight  and 
believed  he  could  find  his  way  through  it  at  night.  He  thought 
that  a  run  of  three  hundred  yards  would  carry  us  over  the  hot 
test  part  of  the  floor  and  leave  us  our  shoe-sole?.  His  pluck 
gave  me  back-bone.  We  took  one  lantern  and  instructed  the 
guides  to  hang  the  other  to  the  roof  of  the  look-out  house  to 
serve  as  a  beacon  for  us  in  case  we  got  lost,  and  then  the  party 
started  back  up  the  precipice  and  Marlette  and  I  mads  our  run. 
We  skipped  over  the  hot  floor  and  over  the  red  crevices  with 
brisk  dispatch  and  reached  the  cold  lava  safe  but  with  pretty 
warm  feet.  Then  we  took  things  leisurely  and  comfortably, 


A    VISIT    TO    THE    NORTH    LAKE.  539 

jumping  tolerably  wide  and  probably  bottomless  chasms,  and 
threading  our  way  through  picturesque  lava  upheavals  with 
considerable  confidence.  When  we  got  fairly  away  from  the 
cauldrons  of  boiling  fire,  we  seemed  to  be  in  a  gloomy  desert, 
and  a  suffocatingly  dark  one,  surrounded  by  dim  walls  that 
seemed  to  tower  to  the  sky.  The  only  cheerful  objects  were 
the  glinting  stars  high  overhead. 

By  and  by  Marlette  shouted  "  Stop !"  I  never  stopped 
quicker  in  my  life.  I  asked  what  the  matter  was.  lie  said 
we  were  out  of  the  path.  He  said  we  must  not  try  to  go  on 
till  we  found  it  again,  for  we  were  surrounded  with  beds  of 
rotten  lava  through  which  we  could  easily  break  and  plunge 
down  a  thousand  feet.  I  thought  eight  hundred  would  answer 
for  me,  and  was  about  to  say  so  when  Marlette  partly  proved 
his  statement  by  accidentally  crushing  through  and  disappear- 


BHEAKING   THROUGH, 

ing  to  his  arm-pits.  He  got  out  and  we  hunted  for  the  path  with 
the  lantern.  He  said  there  was  only  one  path  and  that  it  was 
but  vaguely  defined.  We  could  not  find  it.  The  lava  surface 
was  all  alike  in  the  lantern  light.  But  he  was  an  ingenious 
man.  He  said  it  was  not  the  lantern  that  had  informed  him 
that  we  were  out  of  the  path,  but  his  feet.  He  had  noticed  a 
crisp  grinding  of  fine  lava-needles  under  his  feet,  and  some 
instinct  reminded  him  that  in  the  path  these  were  all  worn, 
away.  So  he  put  the  lantern  behind  him,  and  began  to  search 
with  his  boots  instead  of  his  eyes.  It  was  good  sagacity.  The 


540 


FOUNTAINS    OF    FIRE. 


first  time  his  foot  touched  a  surface  that  did  not  grind  under 
it  he  announced  that  the  trail  was  found  again ;  and  after  that 
we  kept  up  a  sharp  listening  for  the  rasping  sound  and  it  always 
warned  us  in  time. 

It  was  a  long  tramp,  but  an  exciting  one.  We  reached  the 
North  Lake  between  ten  and  eleven  o'clock,  and  sat  down  on 
a  huge  overhanging  lava-shelf,  tired  but  satisfied.  The  specta 
cle  presented  was  worth  coming  double  the  distance  to  see. 
Under  us,  and  stretching  away  before  us,  was  a  heaving  sea  of 
molten  fire  of  seemingly  limitless  extent.  The  glare  from  it 
was  so  blinding  that  it  was  some  time  before  we  could  bear  to 
look  upon  it  steadily.  It  was  like  gazing  at  the  sun  at  noon 
day,  except  that  the  glare  was  not  quite  so  white.  At  unequal 
distances  all  around  the  shores  of  the  lake  were  nearly  white- 
hot  chimneys  or  hollow  drums  of  lava,  four  or  five  feet  high, 
and  up  through  them  were  bursting  gorgeous  sprays  of  lava- 
gouts  and  gem  spangles,  some  white,  some  red  and  some  golden 


FIEE  FOUNTAINS. 

— a  ceaseless  bombardment,  and  one  that  fascinated  the  eye 
with  its  unapproachable  splendor.  The  more  distant  jets, 
sparkling  up  through  an  intervening  gossamer  veil  of  vapor, 


SURGING    BILLOWS    OF    FLAME.  541 

seemed  miles  away ;  and  the  further  the  curving  ranks  of  fiery 
fountains  receded,  the  more  fairy-like  and  beautiful  they 
appeared. 

Now  and  then  the  surging  bosom  of  the  lake  under  our  noses 
would  calm  down  ominously  and  seem  to  be  gathering  strength 
for  an  enterprise  ;  and  then  all  of  a  sudden  a  red  dome  of  lava 
of  the  bulk  of  an  ordinary  dwelling  would  heave  itself  aloft 
like  an  escaping  balloon,  then  burst  asunder,  and  out  of  its 
heart  would  flit  a  pale-green  film  of  vapor,  and  float  upward 
and  vanish  in  the  darkness — a  released  soul  soaring  homeward 
from  captivity  with  the  damned,  no  doubt.  The  crashing 
plunge  of  the  ruined  dome  into  the  lake  again  would  send  a 
world  of  seething  billows  lashing  against  the  shores  and  shaking 
the  foundations  of  our  perch.  By  and  by,  a  loosened  mass  of 
the  hanging  shelf  we  sat  on  tumbled  into  the  lake,  jarring  the 
surroundings  like  an  earthquake  and  delivering  a  suggestion 
that  may  have  been  intended  for  a  hint,  and  may  not.  We  did 
not  wait  to  see. 

We  got  lost  again  on  our  way  back,  and  were  more  than  an 
hour  hunting  for  the  path.  We  were  where  we  could  see  the 
beacon  lantern  at  the  look-out  house  at  the  time,  but  thought 
it  was  a  star  and  paid  no  attention  to  it.  We  reached  the  hotel 
at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  pretty  well  fagged  out. 

Kilauea  never  overflows  its  vast  crater,  but  bursts  a  passage 
for  its  lava  through  the  mountain  side  when  relief  is  necessary, 
and  then  the  destruction  is  fearful.  About  1840  it  rent  its 
overburdened  stomach  and  sent  a  broad  river  of  fire  careering 
down  to  the  sea,  which  swept  away  forests,  huts,  plantations 
and  every  thing  else  that  lay  in  its  path.  The  stream  was  jive 
miles  broad,  in  places,  and  two  hundred  feet  deep,  and  the  dis 
tance  it  traveled  was  forty  miles.  It  tore  up  and  bore  away 
acre-patches  of  land  on  its  bosom  like  rafts — rocks,  trees  and 
all  intact.  At  night  the  red  glare  was  visible  a  hundred  miles 
at  sea ;  and  at  a  distance  of  forty  miles  fine  print  could  be  read 
at  midnight.  The  atmosphere  was  poisoned  with  sulphurous 
vapors  and  choked  with  falling  ashes,  pumice  stones  and  cin 
ders  ;  countless  columns  of  smoke  rose  up  and  blended  together 
in  a  tumbled  canopy  that  hid  the  heavens  and  glowed  with  a 


STREAMS    OF    BURNING    LAVA. 

ruddy  flush  reflected  from  the  fires  below  ;  here  and  there  jets 
of  lava  sprung  hundreds  of  feet  into  the  air  and  burst  into  rock 
et-sprays  that  returned  to  earth  in  a  crimson  rain  ;  and  all  the 
while  the  laboring  mountain  shook  with  Nature's  great  palsy-, 


and  voiced  its  distress  in  moanings  and  the  muffled  booming 
of  subterranean  thunders. 

Fishes  *vere  killed  for  twenty  miles  along  the  shore,  where 


PRODIGIOUS    TIDAL-WAVE. 


543 


the  lava  entered  the  sea.  The  earthquakes  caused  some  loss 
of  human  life,  and  a  prodigious  tidal  wave  swept  inland,  carry 
ing  every  thing  before  it  and  drowning  a  number  of  natives. 
The  devastation  consummated  along  the  route  traversed  by  the 


river  of  lava  was  complete  and  incalculable.  Only  a  Pompeii 
and  a  Herculaneum  were  needed  at  the  foot  of  Kilauea  to  make 
the  story  of  the  irruption  immortal. 


CHAPTEE    LXXYI. 

WE  rode  horseback  all  around  the  island  of  Hawaii  (the 
crooked  road  making  the  distance  two  hundred  miles), 
and  enjoyed  the  journey  very  much.  We  were  more  than  a 
week  making'  the  trip,  because  our  Kanaka  horses  would  not 
go  by  a  house  or  a  hut  without  stopping — whip  and  spur  could 
not  alter  their  minds  about  it,  and  so  we  finally  found  that  it 
economized  time  to  let  them  have  their  way.  Upon  inquiry 
the  mystery  was  explained:  the  natives  are  such  thorough 
going  gossips  that  they  never  pass  a  house  without  stopping  to 
swap  news,  and  consequently  their  horses  learn  to  regard  that 
sort  of  thing  as  an  essential  part  of  the  whole  duty  of  man, 
and  his  salvation  not  to  be  compassed  without  it.  However,  at  a 
former  crisis  of  my  life  I  had  once  taken  an  aristocratic  young 
lady  out  driving,  behind  a  horse  that  had  just  retired  from  a 
long  and  honorable  career  as  the  moving  impulse  of  a  milk 
wagon,  and  so  this  present  experience  awoke  a  reminiscent  sad 
ness  in  me  in  place  of  the  exasperation  more  natural  to  the 
occasion.  I  remembered  how  helpless  I  was  that  day,  and  how 
humiliated  ;  how  ashamed  I  was  of  having  intimated  to  the  girl 
that  I  had  always  owned  the  horse  and  was  accustomed  to 
grandeur ;  how  hard  I  tried  to  appear  easy,  and  even  vivacious, 
under  suffering  that  was  consuming  my  vitals ;  how  placidly 
and  maliciously  the  girl  smiled,  and  kept  on  smiling,  while  my 
hot  blushes  baked  themselves  into  a  permanent  blood-pudding 
in  my  face ;  how  the  horse  ambled  from  one  side  of  the  street 
to  the  other  and  waited  complacently  before  every  third  house 


THE    RETIRED    MILK    HORSE. 


545 


two  minutes  and  a  quarter  while  I  belabored  his  back  and  re 
viled  him  in  my  heart ;  how  I  tried  to  keep  him  from  turning 
corners,  and  failed ;  how  I  moved  heaven  and  earth  to  get  him 
out  of  town,  and  did  not  succeed ;  how  he  traversed  the  entire 
settlement  and  delivered  imaginary  milk  at  a  hundred  and 
sixty-two  different  domiciles,  and  how  he  finally  brought  up  at 
a  dairy  depot  and  refused  to  budge  further,  thus  rounding  and 


T1UP  ON    THE   MILK.T   WAI'. 


completing  the  revealment  of  what  the  plebeian  service  of  his 
life  had  been  ;  how,  in  eloquent  silence,  I  walked  the  girl  home, 
and  how,  when  I  took  leave  of  her,  her  parting  remark  scorched 
my  soul  and  appeared  to  blister  me  all  over:  she  said  that  my 
horse  was  a  fine,  capable  animal,  and  I  must  have  taken  great 
comfort  in  him  in  my  time — but  that  if  I  would  take  along 
some  milk-tickets  next  time,  and  appear  to  deliver  them  at  the 
various  halting  places,  it  might  expedite  his  movements  a  little. 
There  was  a  coolness  between  us  after  that. 

In  one  place  in  the  island  of  Hawaii,  we  saw  a  laced  and 
F 


546  ANOTHER    HORSE    STORY. 

ruffled  cataract  of  limpid  water  leaping  from  a  sheer  precipice 
fifteen  hundred  feet  high ;  but  that  sort  of  scenery  finds  its 
stanchest  ally  in  the  arithmetic  rather  than  in  spectacular  effect. 
If  one  desires  to  be  so  stirred  by  a  poem  of  Nature  wrought  in 
the  happily  commingled  graces  of  picturesque  rocks,  glimpsed 
distances,  foliage,  color,  shifting  lights  and  shadows,  and  falling 
water,  that  the  tears  almost  come  into  his  eyes  so  potent  is  the 
charm  exerted,  he  need  not  go  away  from  America  to  enjoy 
such  an  experience.  The  Rainbow  Fall,  in  Watkiiis  Glen 
(N.  Y.),  on  the  Erie  railway,  is  an  example.  It  would  recede 
into  pitiable  insignificance  if  the  callous  tourist  drew  an  arith 
metic  on  it ;  but  left  to  compete  for  the  honors  simply  on  scenic 
grace  and  beauty — the  grand,  the  august  and  the  sublime  being 
barred  the  contest — it  could  challenge  the  old  world  and  the 
new  to  produce  its  peer. 

In  one  locality,  on  our  journey,  we  saw  some  horses  that 
had  been  born  and  reared  on  top  of  the  mountains,  above  the 
range  of  running  water,  and  consequently  they  had  never  drank 
that  fluid  in  their  lives,  but  had  been  always  accustomed  to 
quenching  their  thirst  by  eating  dew-laden  or  shower-wetted 
leaves.  And  now  it  was  destructively  funny  to  see  them  sniff 
suspiciously  at  a  pail  of  water,  and  then  put  in  their  noses  and 
try  to  take  a  lite  out  of  the  fluid,  as  if  it  were  a  solid.  Find 
ing  it  liquid,  they  would  snatch  away  their  heads  and  fall  to 
trembling,  snorting  and  showing  other  evidences  of  fright. 
When  they  became  convinced  at  last  that  the  w^ater  was  friendly 
and  harmless,  they  thrust  in  their  noses  up  to  their  eyes, 
brought  out  a  mouthful  of  the  water,  and  proceeded  to  chew  it 
complacently.  We  saw  a  man  coax,  kick  and  spur  one  of  them 
five  or  ten  minutes  before  he  could  make  it  cross  a  running 
stream.  It  spread  its  nostrils,  distended  its  eyes  and  trembled 
all  over,  just  as  horses  customarily  do  in  the  presence  of  a  ser 
pent — and  for  aught  I  know  it  thought  the  crawling  stream 
was  a  serpent. 

In  due  course  of  time  our  journey  came  to  an  end  at  Ka- 
waehae  (usually  pronounced  To-a-A^ — and  before  we  find  fault 
with  this  elaborate  orthographical  method  of  arriving  at  such 


A  VIEW  IN  THE  IAO  VALLEY. 


A    PICNICING    EXCURSION.  54-7 

an  unostentatious  result,  let  us  lop  off  the  ugh  from  our  word 
"  though  ").  I  made  this  horseback  trip  on  a  mule.  I  paid  ten 
dollars  for  him  at  Kau  (Kah-oo),  added  four  to  get  him  shod, 
rode  him  two  hundred  miles,  and  then  sold  him  for  fifteen  dol 
lars.  I  mark  the  circumstance  with  a  white  stone  (in  the  ab 
sence  of  chalk — for  I  never  saw  a  white  stone  that  a  body  could 
mark  anything  with,  though  out  of  respect  for  the  ancients  I 
have  tried  it  often  enough) ;  for  up  to  that  day  and  date  it  was 
the  first  strictly  commercial  transaction  I  had  ever  entered  into, 
and  come  out  winner.  We  returned  to  Honolulu,  and  from 
thence  sailed  to  the  island  of  Maui,  and  spent  several  weeks 
there  very  pleasantly.  I  still  remember,  with  a  sense  of  indo 
lent  luxury,  a  picnicing  excursion  up  a  romantic  gorge  there, 
called  the  lao  Valley.  The  trail  lay  along  the  edge  of  a  brawl 
ing  stream  in  the  bottom  of  the  gorge — a  shady  route,  for  it 
was  well  roofed  with  the  verdant  domes  of  forest  trees.  Through 
openings  in  the  foliage  we  glimpsed  picturesque  scenery  that 
revealed  ceaseless  changes  and  new  charms  with  every  step  of 
our  progress.  Perpendicular  walls  from  one  to  three  thousand 
feet  high  guarded  the  way,  and  were  sumptuously  plumed  with 
varied  foliage,  in  places,  and  in  places  swathed  in  waving  ferns. 
Passing  shreds  of  cloud  trailed  their  shadows  across  these  shin 
ing  fronts,  mottling  them  with  blots ;  billowy  masses  of  white 
vapor  hid  the  turreted  summits,  and  far  above  the  vapor  swelled 
a  background  of  gleaming  green  crags  and  cones  that  came  and 
went,  through  the  veiling  mists,  like  islands  drifting  in  a  fog; 
sometimes  the  cloudy  curtain  descended  till  half  the  canon  wall 
was  hidden,  then  shredded  gradually  away' till  only  airy  glimpses 
of  the  ferny  front  appeared  through  it — then  swept  aloft  and 
left  it  glorified  in  the  sun  again.  Now  and  then,  as  our  posi 
tion  changed,  rocky  bastions  swung  out  from  the  wall,  a  mimic 
ruin  of  castellated  ramparts  and  crumbling  towers  clothed  with 
mosses  and  hung  with  garlands  of  swaying  vines,  and  as  we 
moved  on  they  swung  back  again  and  hid  themselves  once 
more  in  the  foliage.  Presently  a  verdure-clad  needle  of  stone, 
a  thousand  feet  high,  stepped  out  from  behind  a  corner,  and 
mounted  guard  over  the  mysteries  of  the  valley.  It  seemed  to 


548        DEAD  VOLCANO  OF  HALEAKALA. 

me  that  if  Captain  Cook  needed  a  monument,  here  was  one 
ready  made — therefore,  why  not  put  up  his  sign  here,  and  sell 
out  the  venerable  cocoanut  stump  ? 

But  the  chief  pride  of  Maui  is  her  dead  volcano  of  Halea- 
kala — which  means,  translated,  "  the  house  of  the  sun."  We 
climbed  a  thousand  feet  up  the  side  of  this  isolated  colossus 
one  afternoon ;  then  camped,  and  next  day  climbed  the  remain 
ing  nine  thousand  feet,  and  anchored  on  the  summit,  where  we 
built  a  fire  and  froze  and  roasted  by  turns,  all  night.  "With 
the  first  pallor  of  dawn  we  got  up  and  saw  things  that  were 
new  to  us.  Mounted  on  a  commanding  pinnacle,  we  watched 
Nature  work  her  silent  wonders.  The  sea  was  spread  abroad 
on  every  hand,  its  tumbled  surface  seeming  only  wrinkled  and 
dimpled  in  the  distance.  A  broad  valley  below  appeared  like 
an  ample  checker-board,  its  velvety  green  sugar  plantations 
alternating  with  dun  squares  of  barrenness  and  groves  of  trees 
diminished  to  mossy  tufts.  Beyond  the  valley  were  mountains 
picturesquely  grouped  together ;  but  bear  in  mind,  we  fancied 
that  we  were  looking  up  at  these  things — not  down.  We  seemed 
to  sit  in  the  bottom  of  a  symmetrical  bowl  ten  thousand  feet 
deep,  with  the  valley  and  the  skirting  sea  lifted  away  into  the 
sky  above  us  !  It  was  curious ;  and  not  only  curious,  but  ag 
gravating  ;  for  it  was  having  our  trouble  all  for  nothing,  to 
climb  ten  thousand  feet  toward  heaven  and  then  have  to  look 
up  at  our  scenery.  However,  we  had  to  be  content  with  it  and 
make  the  best  of  it;  for,  all  we  could  do  we  could  not  coax  our 
landscape  down  out  of  the  clouds.  Formerly,  when  I  had  read 
an  article  in  which  Poe  treated  of  this  singular  fraud  perpe 
trated  upon  the  eye  by  isolated  great  altitudes,  I  had  looked 
upon  the  matter  as  an  invention  of  his  own  fancy. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  outside  view — but  we  had  an  inside 
one,  too.  That  was  the  yawning  dead  crater,  into  which  we 
now  and  then  tumbled  rocks,  half  as  large  as  a  barrel,  from  our 
perch,  and  saw  them  go  careering  down  the  almost  perpendic 
ular  sides,  bounding  three  hundred  feet  at  a  jump ;  kicking  up 
*^6t-clouds  wherever  they  struck ;  diminishing  to  our  view  as 
they  sped  farther  into  distance ;  growing  invisible,  finally,  and 


COMPARED    WITH    VESUVIUS. 


549 


only  betraying  their  course  by  faint  little  puffs  of  dust ;  and  com 
ing  to  a  halt  at  last  in  the  bottom  of  the  abyss,  two  thousand  five 


MAGNIFICENT    SPORT. 


hundred  feet  down  from 
where  they  started !  It  was 
magnificent  sport.  We  wore 
ourselves  out  at  it. 

The  crater  of  Vesuvius, 
as  I  have  before  remarked, 
is  a  modest  pit  about  a  thou 
sand  feet  deep  and  three 
thousand  in  circumference ; 
that  of  Kilauea  is  somewhat 
deeper,  and  ten  miles  in 

circumference.  But  what  are  either  of  them  compared  to  the 
vacant  stomach  of  Haleakala  ?  I  will  not  offer  any  figures  of 
my  own,  but  give  official  ones — those  of  Commander  Wilkes, 
U.  S.  IS".,  who  surveyed  it  and  testifies  that  it  is  twenty-seven 
miles  in  circumference!  If  it  had  a  level  bottom  it  would 
make  a  fine  site  for  a  city  like  London.  It  must  have  afforded 
a  spectacle  worth  contemplating  in  the  old  days  when  its  fur 
naces  gave  full  rein  to  their  anger. 

Presently  vagrant  white  clouds  came  drifting  along,  high 
over  the  sea  and  the  valley ;  then  they  came  in  couples  and 
groups ;  then  in  imposing  squadrons ;  gradually  joining  their 
forces,  they  banked  themselves  solidly  together,  a  thousand 


550  AN    INSIDE    VIEW. 

feet  under  us,  and  totally  shut  out  land  and  ocean — not  a  ves 
tige  of  anything  was  left  in  view  but  just  a  little  of  the  rim 
of  the  crater,  circling  away  from  the  pinnacle  whereon  we  sat 
(for  a  ghostly  procession  of  wanderers  from  the  filmy  hosts 
without  had  drifted  through  a  chasm  in  the  crater  wall  and 
filed  round  and  round,  and  gathered  and  sunk  and  blended  to 
gether  till  the  abyss  was  stored  to  the  brim  with  a  fleecy  fog). 
Thus  banked,  motion  ceased,  and  silence  reigned.  Clear  to  the 
horizon,  league  on  league,  the  snowy  floor  stretched  without  a 
break — not  level,  but  in  rounded  folds,  with  shallow  creases  be 
tween,  and  with  here  and  there  stately  piles  of  vapory  archi 
tecture  lifting  themselves  aloft  out  of  the  common  plain — some 
near  at  hand,  some  in  the  middle  distances,  and  others  relieving 
the  monotony  of  the  remote  solitudes.  There  was  little  con 
versation,  for  the  impressive  scene  overawed  speech.  I  felt 
like  the  Last  Man,  neglected  of  the  judgment,  and  left  pin 
nacled  in  mid-heaven,  a  forgotten  relic  of  a  vanished  wrorld. 

While  the  hush  yet  brooded,  the  messengers  of  the  coming 
resurrection  appeared  in  the  East.  A  growing  warmth  suffused 
the  horizon,  and  soon  the  sun  emerged  and  looked  out  over  the 
cloud-waste,  flinging  bars  of  ruddy  light  across  it,  staining  its 
folds  and  billow-caps  with  blushes,  purpling  the  shaded  troughs 
between,  and  glorifying  the  massy  vapor-palaces  and  cathedrals 
with  a  wasteful  splendor  of  all  blendings  and  combinations  of 
rich  coloring. 

It  was  the  sublimest  spectacle  I  ever  witnessed,  and  I  think 
the  memory  of  it  will  remain  with  me  always. 


CHAPTER  LXXYIL 

I  STUMBLED  upon  one  curious  character  in  the  Island  of 
Mani.  He  became  a  sore  annoyance  to  me  in  the  course 
of  time.  My  first  glimpse  of  him  was  in  a  sort  of  public  room 
in  the  town  of  Lahaina.  He  occupied  a  chair  at  the  opposite 
side  of  the  apartment,  and  sat  eyeing  our  party  with  interest 
for  some  minutes,  and  listening  as  critically  to  what  we  were 
saying  as  if  he  fancied  we  were  talking  to  him  and  expecting 
him  to  reply.  I  thought  it  very  sociable  in  a  stranger.  Pres 
ently,  in  the  course  of  conversation,  I  made  a  statement  bearing 
upon  the  subject  under  discussion — and  I  made  it  with  due 
modesty,  for  there  was  nothing  extraordinary  about  it,  and  it 
was  only  put  forth  in  illustration  of  a  point  at  issue.  I  had 
barely  finished  when  this  person  spoke  out  with  rapid  utterance 
and  feverish  anxiety  : 

"  Oh,  that  was  certainly  remarkable,  after  a  fashion,  but  you 
ought  to  have  seen  my  chimney — you  ought  to  have  seen  my 
chimney,  sir!  Smoke!  I  wish  I  may  hang  if — Mr.  Jones, 
you  remember  that  chimney — you  must  remember  that  chim 
ney  !  Uso,  no — I  recollect,  now,  you  warn't  living  on  this  side 
of  the  island  then.  But  I  am  telling  you  nothing  but  the  truth, 
and  I  wish  I  may  never  draw  another  breath  if  that  chimney 
didn't  smoke  so  that  the  smoke  actually  got  caked  in  it  and  I 
had  to  dig  it  out  with  a  pickaxe !  You  may  smile,  gentlemen, 
but  the  High  Sheriff's  got  a  hunk  of  it  which  I  dug  out  before 
his  eyes,  and  so  it's  perfectly  easy  for  you  to  go  and  examine 
for  yourselves." 

The  interruption  broke  up  the  conversation,  which  had  al- 


552  STORY    OF    THE    BIG    TREE. 

ready  begun  to  lag,  and  we  presently  hired  some  natives  and 
an  ont-rigger  canoe  or  two,  and  went  out  to  overlook  a  grand 
surf-bathing  contest. 

Two  weeks  after  this,  while  talking  in  a  company,  I  looked 
up  and  detected  this  same  man  boring  through  and  through 
me  with  his  intense  eye,  and  noted  again  his  twitching  muscles 
and  his  feverish  anxiety  to  speak.  The  moment  I  paused,  he 
said  : 

"  Beg  your  pardon,  sir,  beg  your  pardon,  but  it  can  only  be 
considered  remarkable  when  brought  into  strong  outline  by 
isolation.  Sir,  contrasted  with  a  circumstance  which  occurred 
in  my  own  experience,  it  instantly  becomes  commonplace.  No, 
not  that — for  I  will  not  speak  so  discourteously  of  any  experi 
ence  in  the  career  of  a  stranger  and  a  gentleman — but  I  am 
obliged  to  say  that  you  could  not,  and  you  would  not  ever  again 
refer  to  this  tree  as  a  large  one,  if  you  could  behold,  as  I  have, 
the  great  Yakmatack  tree,  in  the  island  of  Ounaska,  sea  of 
Kamtchatka — a  tree,  sir,  not  one  inch  less  than  four  hundred 
and  fifteen  feet  in  solid  diameter  ! — and  I  wish  I  may  die  in  a 
minute  if  it  isn't  so !  Oh,  you  needn't  look  so  questioning, 
gentlemen ;  here's  old  Cap  Saltmarsh  can  say  whether  I  know 
what  I'm  talking  about  or  not.  I  showed  him  the  tree." 

Captain  Saltmarsh. — "  Come,  now,  cat  your  anchor,  lad — • 
you're  heaving  too  taut.  You  promised  to  show  me  that  stun 
ner,  and  I  walked  more  than  eleven  mile  with  you  through  the 
cussedest  jungle  /ever  see,  a  hunting  for  it ;  but  the  tree  you 
showed  me  finally  warn't  as  big  around  as  a  beer  cask,  and  you 
know  that  your  own  self,  Markiss." 

"  Hear  the  man  talk !  Of  course  the  tree  was  reduced  that 
way,  but  didn't  I  explain  it  ?  Answer  me,  didn't  I  ?  Didn't 
I  say  I  wished  you  could  have  seen  it  when  I  first  saw  it  ? 
"When  you  got  up  on  your  ear  and  called  me  names,  and  said 
I  had  brought  you  eleven  miles  to  look  at  a  sapling,  didn't  I 
explain  to  you  that  all  the  whale-ships  in  the  North  Seas  had 
been  wooding  off  of  it  for  more  than  twenty-seven  years  ?  And 
did  you  s'pose  the  tree  could  last  for-ever,  con-found  it  ?  I 


MY    MARE    MARGARETTA.  553 

don't  sec  why  you  want  to  keep  back  things  that  way,  and  try 
to  injure  a  person  that's  never  done  you  any  harm." 

Somehow  this  man's  presence  made  me  uncomfortable,  and 
I  was  glad  when  a  native  arrived  at  that  moment  to  say  th?t 


ELEVEN  MILES  TO  SEE. 

Muckawow,  the  most  companionable  and  luxurious  among  the 
rude  war-chiefs  of  the  Islands,  desired  us  to  come  over  and  help 
him  enjoy  a  missionary  whom  he  had  found  trespassing  on  his 
grounds. 

I  think  it  was  about  ten  days  afterward  that,  as  I  finished  a 
statement  I  was  making  for  the  instruction  of  a  group  of  friends 
and  acquaintances,  and  which  made  no  pretence  of  being  extra 
ordinary,  a  familiar  voice  chimed  instantly  in  on  the  heels  of 
my  last  word,  and  said  : 

"  But,  my  dear  sir,  there  was  nothing  remarkable  about  that 
horse,  or  the  circumstance  either — nothing  in  the  world  !  I 
mean  no  sort  of  offence  when  I  say  it,  sir,  but  you  really  do 
not  know  anything  whatever  about  speed.  Bless  your  heart, 
if  you  could  only  have  seen  my  mare  Margaretta ;  there  was  a 
beast ! — there  was  lightning  for  you !  Trot !  Trot  is  no  name 


554 


AN    EIGHTEEN    MILE    RACE. 


for  it — she  flew !  How  she  could  whirl  a  buggy  along  !  I 
started  her  out  once,  sir — Colonel  Bilgewater,  you  recollect 
that  animal  perfectly  well — I  started  her  out  about  thirty  or 
thirty-five  yards  ahead  of  the  awfullest  storm  I  ever  saw  in  my 
life,  and  it  chased  us  upwards  of  eighteen  miles !  It  did,  by 
the  everlasting  hills !  And  I'm  telling  you  nothing  but  the 
unvarnished  truth  when  I  say  that  not  one  single  drop  of  rain 
fell  on  me — not  a  single  drop,  sir !  And  I  swear  to  it !  But 
my  dog  was  a-swinmiiug  behind  the  wagon  all  the  way  I" 


CHASED  BY  A  STORM. 


For  a  week  or  two  I  stayed  mostly  within  doors,  for  I  seemed 
to  meet  this  person  everywhere,  and  he  had  become  utterly 
hateful  to  me.  But  one  evening  I  dropped  in  on  Captain  Per 
kins  and  his  friends,  and  we  had  a  sociable  time.  About  ten 
o'clock  I  chanced  to  be  talking  about  a  merchant  friend  of 
mine,  and  without  really  intending  it,  the  remark  slipped  out 
that  he  was  a  little  mean  and  parsimonious  about  paying  his 
workmen.  Instantly,  through  the  steam  of  a  hot  whiskey 
punch  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  room,  a  remembered  voice 
shot — and  for  a  moment  I  trembled  on  the  imminent  verge  of 
profanity : 


THE    INCORPORATED    COMPANY    OF    MEAN    MEN.  555 


"  Oh,  my  dear  sir,  really  you  expose  yourself  when  you  parade 
that  as  a  surprising  circumstance.  Bless  your  heart  and  hide, 
you  are  ignorant  of  the  very  A  B  C  of  meanness !  ignorant  as 
the  unborn  babe  !  ignorant  as  unborn  twins  !  You  don't  know 
any  thing  about  it !  It  is  pitiable  to  see  you,  sir,  a  well-spoken 
and  prepossessing  stranger,  making  such  an  enormous  pow-wow 
here  about  a  subject  concerning  which  your  ignorance  is  per 
fectly  humiliating  !  Look  me  in  the  eye,  if  you  please  ;  look 
me  in  the  eye.  John  James  Godfrey  was  the  son  of  poor  but 
honest  parents  in  the  State  of  Mississippi — boyhood  friend  of 
mine — bosom  comrade  in  later  years.  Heaven  rest  his  noble 
spirit,  he  is  gone  from  us  now.  John  James  Godfrey  was  hired 
by  the  Hayblossom  Mining  Company  in  California  to  do  some 
blasting  for  them — the  "  Incorporated  Company  of  Mean  Men," 
the  boys  used  to  call  it. 
"Well,  one  day  he  drilled  a 
hole  about  four  feet  deep 
and  put  in  an  awful  blast 
of  powder,  and  was  stand 
ing  over  it  ramming  it 
down  with  an  iron  crowbar 
about  nine  foot  long,  when 
the  cussed  thing  struck  a 
spark  and  fired  the  powder, 
and  scat !  away  John  God 
frey  whizzed  like  a  sky 
rocket,  him  and  his  crow 
bar !  "Well,  sir,  he  kept 
on  going  up  in  the  air 
higher  and  higher,  till  he 
didn't  look  any  bigger  than 
a  boy — and  he  kept  going 
on  up  higher  and  higher, 
till  he  didn't  look  any  big 
ger  than  a  doll — and  he  kept  on  going  up  higher  and  higher, 
till  he  didn't  look  any  bigger  than  a  little  small  bee — and  then 


LEAVING  WORK. 


556  SAD    FATE    OF    A    LIAR. 

he  went  out  of  sight !  Presently  he  came  in  sight  again,  look 
ing  like  a  little  small  bee — and  he  came  along  down  further 
and  further,  till  he  looked  as  big  as  a  doll  again — and  down 
further  and  further,  till  he  was  as  big  as  a  boy  again — and  fur 
ther  and  further,  till  he  was  a  full-sized  man  once  more ;  and 
then  him  and  his  crowbar  came  a  wh-izzing  down  and  lit  right 
exactly  in  the  same  old  tracks  and  went  to  r-ramming  down, 
and  r-ramming  down,  and  r-ramming  down  again,  just  the  same 
as  if  nothing  had  happened !  Now  do  you  know,  that  poor 
cuss  warn't  gone  only  sixteen  minutes,  and  yet  that  Incorpo 
rated  Company  of  Mean  Men  DOCKED  HIM  FOR  THE  LOST  TIME  T> 

I  said  I  had  the  headache,  and  so  excused  myself  and  went 
home.  And  on  my  diary  I  entered  "  another  night  spoiled  " 
by  this  offensive  loafer.  And  a  fervent  curse  was  set  down 
with  it  to  keep  the  item  company.  And  the  very  next  day  I 
packed  up,  out  of  all  patience,  and  left  the  Island. 

Almost  from  the  very  beginning,  I  regarded  that  man  as  a 
liar. 

The  line  of  points  represents  an  interval  of  years.  At  the 
end  of  which  time  the  opinion  hazarded  in  that  last  sentence 
came  to  be  gratifyingly  and  remarkably  endorsed,  and  by 
wholly  disinterested  persons.  The  man  Markiss  was  found 
one  morning  hanging  to  a  beam  of  his  own  bedroom  (the  doors 
and  windows  securely  fastened  on  the  inside),  dead ;  and  on 
his  breast  was  pinned  a  paper  in  his  own  handwriting  begging 
his  friends  to  suspect  no  innocent  person  of  having  any  thing 
to  do  with  his  death,  for  that  it  was  the  work  of  his  own  hands 
entirely.  Yet  the  jury  brought  in  the  astounding  verdict  that 
deceased  came  to  his  death  "  by  the  hands  of  some  person  or 
persons  unknown  !"  They  explained  that  the  perfectly  unde- 
viating  consistency  of  Markiss's  character  for  thirty  years  tow 
ered  aloft  as  colossal  and  indestructible  testimony,  that  what 
ever  statement  he  chose  to  make  was  entitled  to  instant  and 
unquestioning  acceptance  as  a  lie.  And  they  furthermore 
stated  their  belief  that  he  was  not  dead,  and  instanced  the 


EVIDENCE    OF    INSANITY 


557 


strong  circumstantial  evidence  of  his  own  word  that  he  was 
dead — and  beseeched  the  coroner  to  delay  the  funeral  as  long 
as  possible,  which  was  done.  And  so  in  the  tropical  climate 
of  Lahaina  the  coffin  stood  open  for  seven  days,  and  then  even 
the  loyal  jury  gave  him  up.  But  they  sat  on  him  again,  and 
changed  their  verdict  to  "  suicide  induced  by  mental  aberra 
tion  " — because,  said  they,  with  penetration,  "  he  said  he  was 
dead,  and  he  was  dead ;  and  would  he  have  told  the  truth  if 
he  had  been  in  his  right  mind  3  No,  sir." 


OHAPTEE   LXXVIII. 

FTER  half  a  year's  luxurious  vagrancy  in  the  islands,  I 
took  shipping  in  a  sailing  vessel,  and  regretfully  re 
turned  to  San  Francisco — a  voyage  in  every  way  delightful, 
but  without  an  incident :  imless  lying  two  long  weeks  in  a  dead 
calm,  eighteen  hundred  miles  from  the  nearest  land,  may  rank 
as  an  incident.  Schools  of  whales  grew  so  tame  that  day  after 
day  they  played  about  the  ship  among  the  porpoises  and  the 
sharks  without  the  least  apparent  fear  of  us,  and  we  pelted  them 
with  empty  bottles  for  lack  of  better  sport.  Twenty-four  hours 
afterward  these  bottles  would  be  still  lying  on  the  glassy  water 
under  our  noses,  showing  that  the  ship  had  not  moved  out  of 
her  place  in  all  that  time.  The  calm  was  absolutely  breathless, 
and  the  surface  of  the  sea  absolutely  without  a  wrinkle.  For  a 
whole  day  arid  part  of  a  night  we  lay  so  close  to  another  ship 
that  had  drifted  to  our  vicinity,  that  we  carried  on  conver 
sations  with  her  passengers,  introduced  each  other  by  name,  and 
became  pretty  intimately  acquainted  with  people  we  had  never 
heard  of  before,  and  have  never  heard  of  since.  This  was  the 
only  vessel  we  saw  during  the  whole  lonely  voyage.  We  had 
fifteen  passengers,  and  to  show  how  hard  pressed  they  were  at 
last  for  occupation  and  amusement,  I  will  mention  that  the 
gentlemen  gave  a  good  part  of  their  time  every  day,  during  the 
calm,  to  trying  to  sit  on  an  empty  champagne  bottle  (lying  on 
its  side),  and  thread  a  needle  without  touching  their  heels  to 
the  deck,  or  falling  over ;  and  the  ladies  sat  in  the  shade  of  the 


PREPARATION  FOR  LECTURING. 


559 


mainsail,  and  watched  the  enterprise  with  absorbing  interest. 
"We  were  at  sea  five  Sundays ;  and  yet,  but  for  the  almanac, 
we  never  would  have  known  but  that  all  the  other  days  were 
Sundays  too. 

I  was  home  again,  in 
San  Francisco,  without 
means  and  without  em 
ployment.  I  tortured  my 
brain  for  a  saving  scheme 
of  some  kind,  and  at  last 
a  public  lecture  occurred 
to  me!  I  sat  down  and 
wrote  one,  in  a  fever  of 
hopeful  anticipation.  I 
showed  it  to  several  friends, 
but  they  all  shook  their  heads, 
said  nobody  would  come  to  hear  me, 
and  I  would  make  a  humiliating  fail 
ure  of  it.  They  said  that  as  I  had  never  spoken  in  public,  I 
would  break  down  in  the  delivery,  anyhow.  I  was  disconsolate 
now.  But  at  last  an  editor  slapped  me  on  the  back  and  told 
me  to  "go  ahead."  He  said,  "  Take  the  largest  house  in  town, 
and  charge  a  dollar  a  ticket."  The  audacity  of  the  proposition 
was  charming ;  it  seemed  fraught  with  practical  worldly  wis 
dom,  however.  The  proprietor  of  the  several  theatres  endorsed 
the  advice,  and  said  I  might  have  his  handsome  new  opera-house 
at  half  price — fifty  dollars.  In  sheer  desperation  I  took  it — on 
credit,  for  sufficient  reasons.  In  three  days  I  did  a  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars'  worth  of  printing  and  advertising,  and  was  the 
most  distressed  and  frightened  creature  on  the  Pacific  coast.  I 
could  not  sleep — who  could,  under  such  circumstances  ?  For 
other  people  there  was  facetiousness  in  the  last  line  of  my 
posters,  but  to  me  it  was  plaintive  with  a  pang  when  I  wrote  it : 

"  Doors  open  at  7£.     The  trouble  will  begin  at  8." 

That  line  has  done  good  service  since.     Showmen  have 
borrowed  it  frequently.     I  have  even  seen  it  appended  to  a 


560  VALUABLE    ASSISTANTS. 

newspaper  advertisement  reminding  school  pupils  in  vacation 
what  time  next  term  would  begin.  As  those  three  days  of 
suspense  dragged  by,  I  grew  more  and  more  unhappy.  I  had 
sold  two  hundred  tickets  among  my  personal  friends,  but  I  feared 
they  might  not  come.  My  lecture,  which  had  seemed  "humor- 
bus"  to  me,  at  first,  grew  steadily  more  and  more  dreary,  till 
not  a  vestige  of  fun  seemed  left,  and  I  grieved  that  I  could  not 
bring  a  coffin  on  the  stage  and  turn  the  thing  into  a  funeral. 
I  was  so  panic-stricken,  at  last,  that  I  went  to  three  old  friends, 
giants  in  stature,  cordial  by  nature,  and  stormy-voiced,  and  said : 

"  This  thing  is  going  to  be  a  failure ;  the  jokes  in  it  are  so 
dim  that  nobody  will  ever  see  them ;  I  would  like  to  have  you 
sit  in  the  parquette,  and  help  me  through." 

They  said  they  would.  Then  I  went  to  the  wife  of  a  pop 
ular  citizen,  and  said  that  if  she  was  willing  to  do  me  a  very 
great  kindness,  I  would  be  glad  if  she  and  her  husband  would 
sit  prominently  in  the  left-hand  stage-box,  where  the  whole 
house  could  see  them.  I  explained  that  I  should  need  help,  and 
would  turn  toward  her  and  smile,  as  a  signal,  when  I  had  been 
delivered  of  an  obscure  joke — "and  then,"  I  added,  "don't 
wait  to  investigate,  but  respond  !  " 

She  promised.  Down  the  street  I  met  a  man  I  never  had 
seen  before.  He  had  been  drinking,  and  was  beaming  with 
smiles  and  good  nature.  He  said  : 

"  My  name's  Sawyer.  You  don't  know  me,  but  that  don't 
matter.  I  haven't  got  a  cent,  but  if  you  knew  how  bad  I  wanted 
to  laugh,  you'd  give  me  a  ticket.  Come,  now,  what  do  you 
say  ? " 

"  Is  your  laugh  hung  on  a  hair-trigger  ? — that  is,  is  it  criti 
cal,  or  can  you  get  it  off  easy  f  " 

My  drawling  infirmity  of  speech  so  affected  him  that  he 
laughed  a  specimen  or  two  that  struck  me  as  being  about  the 
article  I  wanted,  and  I  gave  him  a  ticket,  and  appointed  him  to 
sit  in  the  second  circle,  in  the  centre,  and  be  responsible  for 
that  division  of  the  house.  I  gave  him  minute  instructions 
about  how  to  detect  indistinct  jokes,  and  then  went  away,  and 
left  him  chuckling  placidly  over  the  novelty  of  the  idea. 


MY    FIRST    ATTEMPT. 


561 


I  ate  nothing  on  the  last  of  the  three  eventful  days — I  only 
suffered.  I  had  advertised  that  on  this  third  day  the  box-office 
would  be  opened  for  the  sale  of  reserved  seats.  I  crept  down 
to  the  theatre  at  four  in  the  afternoon  to  see  if  any  sales  had 
been  made.  The  ticket  seller  was  gone,  the  box-office  was 
locked  up.  I  had  to  swallow  suddenly,  or  my  heart  would  have 
got  out.  "  No  sales,"  I  said  to  myself;  "  I  might  have  known 
it."  I  thought  of  suicide,  pretended  illness,  flight.  I  thought 
of  these  things  in  earnest,  for  I  was  very  miserable  and  scared. 
But  of  course  I  had  to  drive  them  away,  and  prepare  to  meet  my 
fate.  I  could  not  wait  for  half-past  seven — I  wanted  to  face  the 
horror,  and  end  it — the  feeling  of  many  a  man  doomed  to  hang, 

no  doubt.  I  went  down 
back  streets  at  six  o'clock, 
and  entered  the  theatre  by 
the  back  door.  I  stumbled 
my  way  in  the  dark  among 
the  ranks  of  canvas  scen 
ery,  and  stood  on  the 
stage.  The  house  was  gloo 
my  and  silent,  and  its  emp 
tiness  depressing.  I  went 
into  the  dark  among  the 
scenes  again,  and  for  an 
hour  and  a  half  gave  myself 
up  to  the  horrors,  wholly 
unconscious  of  everything 
else.  Then  I  heard  a  mur 
mur;  it  rose  higher  and 
higher,  and  ended  in  a 
crash,  mingled  with  cheers. 
It  made  my  hair  raise,  it 
was  so  close  to  me,  and  so 
loud.  There  was  a  pause, 
and  then  another;  pres 
ently  came  a  third,  and  before  I  well  knew  what  I  was  about,  I 

was  in  the  middle  of  the  stage,  staring  at  a  sea  of  faces,  bewildered 
36f 


SEVERE    CASE    OF    STAGE-FRIGHT. 


562 


THE    AUDIENCE    CARRIED. 


by  the  fierce  glare  of  the  lights,  and  quaking  in  every  limb 
with  a  terror  that  seemed  like  to  take  my  life  away.  The 
house  was  full,  aisles  and  all ! 

The  tumult  in  my  heart  and  brain  and  legs  continued  a  full 
minute  before  I  could  gain  any  command  over  myself.  Then 
I  recognized  the  charity  and  the  friendliness  in  the  faces  before 
me,  and  little  by  little  my  fright  melted  away,  and  I  began  to 


MY    THREE    PARQUETTE    ALLIES. 


talk  Within  three  or  four  minutes  I  was  comfortable,  and 
even  content.  My  three  chief  allies,  with  three  auxiliaries, 
were  on  hand,  in  the  parquette,  all  sitting  together,  all  armed 

with  bludgeons,  and  all 
ready  to  make  an  onslaught 
upon  the  feeblest  joke  that 
might  show  its  head.  And 
wiienever  a  joke  did  fall, 
their  bludgeons  came  down 
and  their  faces  seemed  to 
split  from  ear  to  ear  ;  Saw 
yer,  whose  hearty  counte 
nance  was  seen  looming 
redly  in  the  centre  of  the 
second  circle,  took  it  up, 
and  the  house  was  carried 
handsomely.  Inferior  jokes 
Presently  I  delivered  a  bit  of 


SAWYER    IN    THE    CIRCLE. 


never  fared  so  royally  before. 


A    PATHETIC    JOKE.  563 

serious  matter  with  impressive  unction  (it  was  my  pet),  and 
the  audience  listened  with  an  absorbed  hush  that  gratified  me 
more  than  any  applause ;  and  as  I  dropped  the  last  word  of 
the  clause,  I  happened  to  turn  and  catch  Mrs.  -  — 's  intent 
and  waiting  eye  ;  my  conversation  with  her  flashed  upon  me, 
and  in  spite  of  all  I  could  do  I  smiled.  She  took  it  for  the 
signal,  and  promptly  delivered  a  mellow  laugh  that  touched 
off  the  whole  audience ;  and  the  explosion  that  followed  was 
the  triumph  of  the  evening.  I  thought  that  that  honest  man 
Sawyer  would  choke  himself;  and  as  for  the  bludgeons,  they 
performed  like  pile-drivers.  But  my  poor  little  morsel  of 
pathos  was  ruined.  It  was  taken  in  good  faith  as  an  inten 
tional  joke,  and  the  prize  one  of  the  entertainment,  and  I 
wisely  let  it  go  at  that. 

All  the  papers  were  kind  in  the  morning;  my  appetite 
returned ;  I  had  abundance  of  money.  All's  well  that  ends 
well. 


CHAPTER     LXXIX. 

I  LAUNCHED  out  as  a  lecturer,  now,  with  great  boldness. 
I  had  the  field  all  to  myself,  for  public  lectures  were  almost 
an  unknown  commodity  in  the  Pacific  market.  They  are  not 
so  rare,  now,  I  suppose.  I  took  an  old  personal  friend  along 
to  play  agent  for  me,  and  for  two  or  three  weeks  we  roamed 
through  Nevada  and  California  and  had  a  very  cheerful  time 
of  it.  Two  days  before  I  lectured  in  Virginia  City,  two  stage 
coaches  were  robbed  within  two  miles  of  the  town.  The  dar 
ing  act  was  committed  just  at  dawn,  by  six  masked  men,  who 
sprang  up  alongside  the  coaches,  presented  revolvers  at  the 
heads  of  the  drivers  and  passengers,  and  commanded  a  general 
dismount.  Everybody  climbed  down,  and  the  robbers  took 
their  watches  and  every  cent  they  had.  Then  they  took  gun 
powder  and  blew  up  the  express  specie  boxes  and  got  their 
contents.  The  leader  of  the  robbers  was  a  small,  quick-spoken 
man,  and  the  fame  of  his  vigorous  manner  and  his  intrepidity 
was  in  everybody's  mouth  when  we  arrived. 

The  night  after  instructing  Virginia,  I  walked  over  the 
desolate  "  divide  "  and  down  to  Gold  Hill,  and  lectured  there. 
The  lecture  done,  I  stopped  to  talk  with  a  friend,  and  did  not 
start  back  till  eleven.  The  "  divide "  was  high,  unoccupied 
ground,  between  the  towns,  the  scene  of  twenty  midnight 
murders  and  a  hundred  robberies.  As  we  climbed  up  and 
stepped  out  on  this  eminence,  the  Gold  Hill  lights  dropped 
out  of  sight  at  our  backs,  and  the  night  closed  down  gloomy 


ATTACKED    BY    HIGHWAYMEN.  565 

and  dismal.  A  sharp  wind  swept  the  place,  too,  and  chilled 
our  perspiring  bodies  through. 

"  I  tell  you  I  don't  like  this  place  at  night,"  said  Mike  the 
agent. 

"  Well,  don't  speak  so  loud,"  I  said.  "  You  needn't  remind 
anybody  that  we  are  here." 

Just  then  a  dim  figure  approached  me  from  the  direction  of 
Virginia — a  man,  evidently.  He  came  straight  at  me,  and  I 
stepped  aside  to  let  him  pass  ;  he  stepped  in  the  way  and  con 
fronted  me  again.  Then  I  saw  that  he  had  a  mask  on  and 
was  holding  something  in  my  face — I  heard  a  click-click  and 
recognized  a  revolver  in  dim  outline.  I  pushed  the  barrel 
aside  with  my  hand  and  said  : 

"Don't!" 

He  ejaculated  sharply : 

"  Your  watch !     Your  money  ! " 

I  said : 

"You  can  have  them  with  pleasure — but  take  the  pistol 
away  from  my  face,  please.  It  makes  me  shiver." 

"  No  remarks  !     Hand  out  your  money  ! " 

"  Certainly— I—" 

"  Put  up  your  hands !  Don't  you  go  for  a  weapon  !  Put 
'em  up !  Higher  !  " 

I  held  them  above  my  head. 

A  pause.     Then : 

"  Are  you  going  to  hand  out  your  money  or  not  ?" 

I  dropped  my  hands  to  my  pockets  and  said : 

Certainly!     I—" 

"  Put  up  your  hands  !  Do  you  want  your  head  blown  off? 
Higher !" 

I  put  them  above  my  head  again. 

Another  pause. 

Are  you  going  to  hand  out  your  money  or  not  f  Ah-ah — • 
again  \  Put  up  your  hands !  By  George,  you  want  the  head 
shot  off  you  awful  bad ! " 

"  Well,  friend,  I'm  trying  my  best  to  please  you.     You  teH 


566  "PUT    UP    YOUR    HANDS." 

me  to  give  up  my  money,  and  when  I  reach  for  it  you  tell  me 
to  put  up  my  hands.  If  you  would  only — .  Oh,  now — don't ! 
All  six  of  you  at  me  !  That  other  man  will  get  away  while. — 
Now  please  take  some  of  those  revolvers  out  of  my  face — do, 
if  you  please  !  Every  time  one  of  them  clicks,  my  liver  comes 
up  into  my  throat !  If  you  have  a  mother — any  of  you — or  if 
any  of  you  have  ever  had  a  mother — or  a — grandmother — or 
a—" 

"  Cheese  it !  Will  you  give  up  your  money,  or  have  we 
got  to — .  There-there — none  of  that !  Put  up  your  hands  !  " 

"  Gentlemen — I  know  you  are  gentlemen  by  your— 

"  Silence !  If  you  want  to  be  facetious,  young  man,  there 
are  times  and  places  more  fitting.  This  is  a  serious  business." 

"You  prick  the  marrow  of  my  opinion.  The  funerals  I 
have  attended  in  my  time  were  comedies  compared  to  it. 
Now  /think—" 

"  Curse  your  palaver  !  Your  money  ! — your  money ! — 
your  money  !  Hold  ! — put  up  your  hands  !  " 

"  Gentlemen,  listen  to  reason.  You  see  how  I  am  situated 
— now  don't  put  those  pistols  so  close — I  smell  the  pow^der. 
You  see  how  I  am  situated.  If  I  had  four  hands — so  that  I 
could  hold  up  two  and— 

"  Throttle  him !     Gag  him !     Kill  him !» 

"  Gentlemen,  dorft !  Nobody's  watching  the  other  fellow. 
Why  don't  some  of  you — .  Ouch !  Take  it  away,  please ! 
Gentlemen,  you  see  that  I've  got  to  hold  up  my  hands  ;  and 
80  I  can't  take  out  my  money — but  if  you'll  be  so  kind  as  to 
take  it  out  for  me,  I  will  do  as  much  for  you  some — 

"  Search  him  Beauregard — and  stop  his  jaw  with  a  bullet, 
quick,  if  he  wags  it  again.  Help  Beauregard,  Stonewall." 

Then  three  of  them,  with  the  small,  spry  leader,  adjourned 
to  Mike  and  fell  to  searching  him.  I  was  so  excited  that  my 
lawless  fancy  tortured  me  to  ask  my  two  men  all  manner  of 
facetious  questions  about  their  rebel  brother-generals  of  the 
South,  but,  considering  the  order  they  had  received,  it  was 
but  common  prudence  to  keep  still.  When  everything  had 


FORMIDABLE    AND    RENOWNED    FOES. 


567 


been  taken  from  me, — watch,  money,  and  a  multitude  of  trifles 
of  small  value, — I  supposed  I  was  free,  and  forthwith  put  my 
cold  hands  into  my  empty  pockets  and  began  an  inoffensive 


A  PREDICAMENT. 

jig  to  warm  my  feet  and  stir  up  some  latent  courage — but  in 
stantly  all  pistols  were  at  my  head,  and  the  order  came  again : 

"  Be  still !     Put  up  your  hands  !     And  keep  them  up  ! " 

They  stood  Mike  up  alongside  of  me,  with  strict  orders  to 
keep  his  hands  above  his  head,  too,  and  then  the  chief  high 
wayman  said : 

"  Beauregard,  hide  behind  that  boulder ;  Phil  Sheridan, 
you  hide  behind  that  other  one  ;  Stonewall  Jackson,  put  your 
self  behind  that  sage-bush  there.  Keep  your  pistols  bearing 
on  these  fellows,  and  if  they  take  down  their  hands  within  ten 
minutes,  or  move  a  single  peg,  let  them  have  it ! " 

Then  three  disappeared  in  the  gloom  toward  the  several 
ambushes,  and  the  other  three  disappeared  down  the  road  to 
ward  Virginia. 

It  was  depressingly  still,  and  miserably  cold.  Now  this 
whole  thing  was  a  practical  joke,  and  the  robbers  were  per 
sonal  friends  of  ours  in  disguise,  and  twenty  more  lay  hidden 


568  THE    WHOLE    THING    A    JOKE. 

within  ten  feet  of  us  during  the  whole  operation,  listening. 
Mike  knew  all  this,  and  was  in  the  joke,  but  I  suspected  noth 
ing  of  it.  To  me  it  was  most  uncomfortably  genuine. 

When  we  had  stood  there  in  the  middle  of  the  road  five 
minutes,  like  a  couple  of  idiots,  with  our  hands  aloft,  freezing 
to  death  by  inches,  Mike's  interest  in  the  joke  began  to  wane. 
He  said : 

"  The  time's  up,  now,  aint  it  ? " 

"  No,  you  keep  still.  Do  you  want  to  take  any  chances  with 
those  bloody  savages  ? " 

Presently  Mike  said : 

"  Now  the  time's  up,  anyway.     I'm  freezing." 

"  Well  freeze.  Better  freeze  than  carry  your  brains  home 
in  a  basket.  Maybe  the  time  is  up,  but  how  do  we  know  ? — 
got  no  watch  to  tell  by.  I  mean  to  give  them  good  measure. 
I  calculate  to  stand  here  fifteen  minutes  or  die.  Don't  you 
move." 

So,  without  knowing  it,  I  was  marking  one  joker  very  sick 
of  his  contract.  When  we  took  our  arms  down  at  last,  they 
were  aching  with  cold  and  fatigue,  and  when  we  went  sneak 
ing  off,  the  dread  I  was  in  that  the  time  might  not  yet  be  up 
and  that  we  would  feel  bullets  in  a  moment,  was  not  sufficient 
to  draw  all  my  attention  from  the  misery  that  racked  my 
stiffened  body. 

The  joke  of  these  highwayman  friends  of  ours  was  mainly  a 
joke  upon  themselves  ;  for  they  had  waited  for  me  on  the  cold 
hill-top  two  full  hours  before  I  came,  and  there  was  very  little 
fun  in  that ;  they  were  so  chilled  that  it  took  them  a  couple  of 
weeks  to  get  warm  again.  Moreover,  I  never  had  a  thought 
that  they  would  kill  me  to  get  money  which  it  was  so  perfect 
ly  easy  to  get  without  any  such  folly,  and  so  they  did  not 
really  frighten  me  bad  enough  to  make  their  enjoyment  worth 
the  trouble  they  had  taken.  I  was  only  afraid  that  their  wea 
pons  would  go  off  accidentally.  Their  very  numbers  inspired 
me  with  confidence  that  no  blood  would  be  intentionally  spilled. 
They  were  not  smart ;  they  ought  to  have  sent  only  one  high- 


FAREWELL    TO    SAN  FRANCISCO. 


569 


Dayman,  with  a  double-barrelled  shot  gun,  if  they  desired  to 
see  the  author  of  this  volume  climb  a  tree. 

However,  I  suppose  that  in  the  long  run  I  got  the  largest 
share  of  the  joke  at  last ;  and  in  a  shape  not  foreseen  by  the 
highwaymen ;  for  the  chilly  exposure  on  the  "  divide  "  while 
I  was  in  a  perspiration  gave  me  a  cold  which  developed  itself 
into  a  troublesome  disease  and  kept  my  hands  idle  some  three 
months,  besides  costing  me  quite  a  sum  in  doctor's  bills.  Since 


BEST  PART  OF   THE  JOKE. 


then  I  play  no  practical  jokes  on  people  and  generally  lose  my 
temper  when  one  is  played  upon  me. 

When  I  returned  to  San  Francisco  I  projected  a  pleasure 
journey  to  Japan  and  thence  westward  around  the  world ;  but  a 
desire  to  see  home  again  changed  my  mind,  and  I  took  a  berth 
in  the  steamship,  bade  good-bye  to  the  friendliest  land  and 
livest,  heartiest  community  on  our  continent,  and  came  by 
the  way  of  the  Isthmus  to  New  York — a  trip  that  was  not 
much  of  a  pic-nic  excursion,  for  the  cholera  broke  out  among 
us  on  the  passage  and  we  buried  two  or  three  bodies  at  sea 
every  day.  I  found  home  a  dreary  place  after  my  long  ab 
sence  ;  for  half  the  children  I  had  known  were  now  wearing 


570 


A    STORY    WITH    A    MORAL. 


whiskers  or  waterfalls,  and  few  of  the  grown  people  I  had  been 
acquainted  with  remained  at  their  hearthstones  prosperous  and 
happy — some  of  them  had  wandered  to  other  scenes,  some  were 
in  jail,  and  the  rest  had  been  hanged.  These  changes  touched 
me  deeply,  and  I  went  away  and  joined  the  famous  Quaker 
City  European  Excursion  and  carried  my  tears  to  foreign 
lands. 

Thus,  after  seven  years  of  vicissitudes,  ended  a  "pleasure 
trip  "  to  the  silver  mines  of  Nevada  which  had  originally  been 
intended  to  occupy  only  three  months.  However,  I  usually 
miss  my  calculations  further  than  that. 

MORAL. 

If  the  reader  thinks  he  is  done,  now,  and  that  this  book 
has  no  moral  to  it,  he  is  in  error.  The  moral  of  it  is  this  :  If 
you  are  of  any  account,  stay  at  home  and  make  your  way  by 
faithful  diligence  ;  but  if  you  are  "  no  account,"  go  away  from 
home,  and  then  you  will  have  to  work,  whether  you  want  to 
or  not.  Thus  you  become  a  blessing  to  your  friends  by  ceas 
ing  to  be  a  nuisance  to  them — if  the  people  you  go  among 
suifer  by  the  operation. 


APPENDIX. 


APPENDIX. 
A. 

BRIEF  SKETCH  OF  MORMON  HISTORY. 

MORMONISM  is  only  about  forty  years  old,  but  its  career  has  been  full  oi 
stir  and  adventure  from  the  beginning,  and  is  likely  to  remain  so  to  the  end. 
Its  adherents  have  been  hunted  and  hounded  from  one  end  of  the  country 
to  the  other,  and  the  result  is  that  for  years  they  have  hated  all  "  Gentiles  " 
indiscriminately  and  with  all  their  might.  Joseph  Smith,  the  finder  of  the 
Book  of  Mormon  and  founder  of  the  religion,  was  driven  from  State  to 
State  with  his  mysterious  copperplates  and  the  miraculous  stones  he  read 
their  inscriptions  with.  Finally  he  instituted  his  "church"  in  Ohio  and 
Brigham  Young  joined  it.  The  neighbors  began  to  persecute,  and  apostasy 
commenced.  Brigham  held  to  the  faith  and  worked  hard.  He  arrested 
desertion.  He  did  more — he  added  converts  in  the  midst  of  the  trouble. 
He  rose  in  favor  and  importance  with  the  brethren.  He  was  made  one  of 
the  Twelve  Apostles  of  the  Church.  He  shortly  fought  his  way  to  a  higher 
post  and  a  more  powerful — President  of  the  Twelve,  The  neighbors  rose 
up  and  drove  the  Mormons  out  of  Ohio,  and  they  settled  in  Missouri. 
Brigham  went  with  them.  The  Missourians  drove  them  out  and  they  retreated 
to  Nauvoo,  Illinois.  They  prospered  there,  and  built  a  temple  which  made 
some  pretensions  to  architectural  grace  and  achieved  some  celebrity  in  a 
section  of  country  where  a  brick  court-house  with  a  tin  dome  and  a  cupola 
on  it  was  contemplated  with  reverential  awe.  But  the  Mormons  were 
badgered  and  harried  again  by  their  neighbors.  All  the  proclamations 
Joseph  Smith  could  issue  denouncing  polygamy  and  repudiating  it  as  utterly 
anti-Mormon  were  of  no  avail ;  the  people  of  the  neighborhood,  on  both 
sides  of  the  Mississippi,  claimed  that  polygamy  was  practised  by  the  Mor 
mons,  and  not  only  polygamy  but  a  little  of  everything  that  was  bad. 
Brigham  returned  from  a  mission  to  England,  where  he  had  established  a 
Mormon  newspaper,  and  he  brought  back  with  him  several  hundred  converts 
to  his  preaching.  His  influence  among  the  brethren  augmented  with  every 
move  he  made.  Finally  Nauvoo  was  invaded  by  the  Missouri  and  Illinois 


MORMON    HISTORY.  573 

Gentiles,  and  Joseph  Smith  killed.  A  Mormon  named  Rigdon  assumed  the 
Presidency  of  the  Mormon  church  and  government,  in  Smith's  place,  and  even 
tried  his  hand  at  a  prophecy  or  two.  But  a  greater  than  he  was  at  hand. 
Brigham  seized  the  advantage  of  the  hour  and  without  other  authority  than 
superior  brain  and  nerve  and  will,  hurled  Rigdon  from  his  high  place  and 
occupied  it  himself.  He  did  more.  He  launched  an  elaborate  curse  at 
Rigdon  and  his  disciples  ;  and  he  pronounced  Rigdon's  "  prophecies  "  ema 
nations  from  the  devil,  and  ended  by  "  handing  the  false  prophet  over  to 
the  buffetings  of  Satan  for  a  thousand  years  " — probably  the  longest  term 
ever  inflicted  in  Illinois.  The  people  recognized  their  master.  They 
straightway  elected  Brigham  Young  President,  by  a  prodigious  majority, 
and  have  never  faltered  in  their  devotion  to  him  from  that  day  to  this. 
Brigham  had  forecast — a  quality  which  no  other  prominent  Mormon  has 
probably  ever  possessed.  He  recognized  that  it  was  better  to  move  to  the 
wilderness  than  be  moved.  By  his  command  the  people  gathered  together 
their  meagre  effects,  turned  their  backs  upon  their  homes,  and  their  faces 
toward  the  wilderness,  and  on  a  bitter  night  in  February  filed  in  sorrowful 
procession  across  the  frozen  Mississippi,  lighted  on  their  way  by  the  glare 
from  their  burning  temple,  whose  sacred  furniture  their  own  hands  had 
fired  !  They  camped,  several  days  afterward,  on  the  western  verge  of  Iowa, 
and  poverty,  want,  hunger,  cold,  sickness,  grief  and  persecution  did  their 
work,  and  many  succumbed  and  died — martyrs,  fair  and  true,  whatever  else 
they  might  have  been.  Two  years  the  remnant  remained  there,  while 
Brigham  and  a  small  party  crossed  the  country  and  founded  Great  Salt  Lake 
City,  purposely  choosing  a  land  which  was  outside  the  ownership  and  juris 
diction  of  the  hated  American  nation.  Note  that.  This  was  in  1847. 
Brigham  moved  his  people  there  and  got  them  settled  just  in  time  to  see 
disaster  fall  again.  For  the  war  closed  and  Mexico  ceded  Brigham's  refuge 
to  the  enemy — the  United  States !  In  1849  the  Mormons  organized  a  "  free 
and  independent "  government  and  erected  the  "  State  of  Deseret,"  with 
Brigham  Young  as  its  head.  But  the  very  next  year  Congress  deliberately 
snubbed  it  and  created  the  "  Territory  of  Utah  "  out  of  the  same  accumula 
tion  of  mountains,  sage-brush,  alkali  and  general  desolation, — but  made 
Brigham  Governor  of  it.  Then  for  years  the  enormous  migration  across  the 
plains  to  California  poured  through  the  land  of  the  Mormons  and  yet  the 
church  remained  staunch  and  true  to  its  lord  and  master.  Neither  hunger, 
thirst,  poverty,  grief,  hatred,  contempt,  nor  persecution  could  drive  the  Mor 
mons  from  their  faith  or  their  allegiance ;  and  even  the  thirst  for  gold, 
which  gleaned  the  flower  of  the  youth  and  strength  of  many  nations  was 
not  able  to  entice  them !  That  was  the  final  test.  An  experiment  that 
could  survive  that  was  an  experiment  with  some  substance  to  it  somewhere. 
Great  Salt  Lake  City  throve  finely,  and  so  did  Utah.  One  of  the  last 
things  which  Brigham  Young  had  done  before  leaving  Iowa,  was  to  appear 
in  the  pulpit  dressed  to  personate  the  worshipped  and  lamented  prophet 
Smith,  and  confer  the  prophetic  succession,  with  all  its  dignities,  emolu 
ments  and  authorities,  upon  "  President  Brigham  Young ! "  The  people 


574  APPENDIX    A. 

accepted  the  pious  fraud  with  the  maddest  enthusiasm,  and  Brigham's 
power  was  sealed  and  secured  for  all  time.  Within  five  years  afterward  he 
openly  added  polygamy  to  the  tenets  of  the  church  by  authority  of  a  "  reve 
lation  "  which  he  pretended  had  been  received  nine  years  before  by  Joseph 
Smith,  albeit  Joseph  is  amply  on  record  as  denouncing  polygamy  to  the  day 
of  his  death. 

Now  was  Brigham  become  a  second  Andrew  Johnson  in  the  small  begin 
ning  and  steady  progress  of  his  oflicial  grandeur.  He  had  served  succes 
sively  as  a  disciple  in  the  ranks ;  home  missionary  ;  foreign  missionary ; 
editor  and  publisher  ;  Apostle  ;  President  of  the  Board  of  Apostles  ;  Presi 
dent  of  all  Mormondom,  civil  and  ecclesiastical ;  successor  to  the  great 
Joseph  by  the  will  of  heaven ;  "  prophet,"  "  seer,"  "  revelator."  There  was 
but  one  dignity  higher  which  he  could  aspire  to,  and  he  reached  out  modestly 
and  took  that — he  proclaimed  himself  a  God  ! 

He  claims  that  he  is  to  have  a  heaven  of  his  own  hereafter,  and  that  he 
will  be  its  God,  and  his  wives  and  children  its  goddesses,  princes  and  prin 
cesses.  Into  it  all  faithful  Mormons  will  be  admitted,  with  their  families, 
and  will  take  rank  and  consequence  according  to  the  number  of  their  wives 
and  children.  If  a  disciple  dies  before  he  has  had  time  to  accumulate 
enough  wives  and  children  to  enable  him  to  be  respectable  in  the  next 
world  any  friend  can  marry  a  few  wives  and  raise  a  few  children  for  him 
after  Tie  is  dead,  and  they  are  duly  credited  to  his  account  and  his  heavenly 
status  advanced  accordingly. 

Let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  majority  of  tne  Mormons  have  always 
been  ignorant,  simple,  of  an  inferior  order  of  intellect,  unacquainted  with 
the  world  and  its  ways  ;  and  let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  wives  of  these 
Mormons  are  necessarily  after  the  same  pattern  and  their  children  likely  to 
be  fit  representatives  of  such  a  conjunction ;  and  then  let  it  be  remembered 
that  far  forty  years  these  creatures  have  been  driven,  driven,  driven,  relent 
lessly  !  and  mobbed,  beaten,  and  shot  down ;  cursed,  despised,  expatriated ; 
banished  to  a  remote  desert,  whither  they  journeyed  gaunt  with  famine  and 
disease,  disturbing  the  ancient  solitudes  with  their  lamentations  and  mark 
ing  the  long  way  with  graves  of  their  dead — and  all  because  they  were 
simply  trying  to  live  and  worship  God  in  the  way  which  they  believed  with 
all  their  hearts  and  souls  to  be  the  true  one.  Let  all  these  things  be  borne 
in  mind,  and  then  it  will  not  be  hard  to  account  for  the  deathless  hatred 
which  the  Mormons  bear  our  people  and  our  government. 

That  hatred  has  "  fed  fat  its  ancient  grudge  "  ever  since  Mormon  Utah 
developed  into  a  self-supporting  realm  and  the  church  waxed  rich  and 
strong.  Brigham  as  Territorial  Governor  made  it  plain  that  Mormondom 
was  for  the  Mormons.  The  United  States  tried  to  rectify  all  that  by  ap 
pointing  territorial  officers  from  New  England  and  other  anti-Mormon  locali 
ties,  but  Brigham  prepared  to  make  their  entrance  into  his  dominions 
difficult.  Three  thousand  United  States  troops  had  to  go  across  the  plains 
and  put  these  gentlemen  in  office.  And  after  they  were  in  office  they  were 
as  helpless  as  so  many  stone  images.  They  made  laws  which  nobody 


MORMON    HISTORY.  575 

minded  and  which  could  not  be  executed.  The  federal  judges  opened  court 
in  a  land  filled  with  crime  and  violence  and  sat  as  holiday  spectacles  for  in 
solent  crowds  to  gape  at — for  there  was  nothing  to  try,  nothing  to  do,  noth 
ing  on  the  dockets !  And  if  a  Gentile  brought  a  suit,  the  Mormon  jury 
would  do  just  as  it  pleased  about  bringing  in  a  verdict,  and  when  the  judg 
ment  of  the  court  was  rendered  no  Mormon  cared  for  it  and  no  officer  could 
execute  it.  Our  Presidents  shipped  one  cargo  of  officials  after  another  to 
Utah,  but  the  result  was  always  the  same — they  sat  in  a  blight  for  awhile, 
they  fairly  feasted  on  scowls  and  insults  day  by  day,  they  saw  every  attempt 
to  do  their  official  duties  find  its  reward  in  darker  and  darker  looks,  and  in 
secret  threats  and  warnings  of  a  more  and  more  dismal  nature — and  at  last 
they  either  succumbed  and  became  despised  tools  and  toys  of  the  Mormons, 
or  got  scared  and  discomforted  beyond  all  endurance  and  left  the  Territory. 
If  a  brave  officer  kept  on  courageously  till  his  pluck  was  proven,  some  pliant 
Buchanan  or  Pierce  would  remove  him  and  appoint  a  stick  in  his  place.  In 
1857  General  Harney  came  very  near  being  appointed  Governor  of  Utah. 
And  so  it  came  ^ery  near  being  Harney  governor  and  Cradlebaugh  judge  ! — 
two  men  who  never  had  any  idea  of  fear  further  than  the  sort  of  murky 
comprehension  of  it  which  they  were  enabled  to  gather  from  the  dictionary. 
Simply  (if  for  nothing  else)  for  the  variety  they  would  have  made  in  a 
rather  monotonous  history  of  Federal  servility  and  helplessness,  it  is  a  pity 
they  were  not  fated  to  hold  office  together  in  Utah. 

Up  to  the  date  of  our  visit  to  Utah,  such  had  been  the  Territorial  record. 
The  Territorial  government  established  there  had  been  a  hopeless  failure, 
and  Brigham  Young  was  the  only  real  power  in  the  land.  He  was  an  abso 
lute  monarch — a  monarch  who  defied  our  President — a  monarch  who 
laughed  at  our  armies  when  they  camped  about  his  capital — a  monarch  who 
received  without  emotion  the  news  that  the  august  Congress  of  the  United 
States  had  enacted  a  solemn  law  against  polygamy,  and  then  went  forth 
calmly  and  married  twenty-five  or  thirty  more  wives. 


B. 

THE  MOUNTAIN  MEADOWS  MASSACRE. 

THE  persecutions  which  the  Mormons  suffered  so  long — and  which  they 
consider  they  still  suffer  in  not  being  allowed  to  govern  themselves — they 
have  endeavored  and  are  still  endeavoring  to  repay.  The  now  almost  for 
gotten  "  Mountain  Meadows  massacre  "  was  their  work.  It  was  very  famous 
in  its  day.  The  whole  United  States  rang  with  its  horrors.  A  few  items 
will  refresh  the  reader's  memory.  A  great  emigrant  train  from  Missouri 
and  Arkansas  passed  through  Salt  Lake  City  and  a  few  disaffected  Mormons 
joined  it  for  the  sake  of  the  strong  protection  it  afforded  for  their  escape. 
In  that  matter  lay  sufficient  cause  for  hot  retaliation  by  the  Mormon  chiefs. 
Besides,  these  one  hundred  and  forty-five  or  one  hundred  and  fifty  unsus 
pecting  emigrants  being  in  part  from  Arkansas,  where  a  noted  Mormon 
missionary  had  lately  been  killed,  and  in  part  from  Missouri,  a  State  re 
membered  with  execrations  as  a  bitter  persecutor  of  the  saints  when  they 
were  few  and  poor  and  friendless,  here  were  substantial  additional  grounds 
for  lack  of  love  for  these  wayfarers.  And  finally,  this  train  was  rich,  very 
rich  in  cattle,  horses,  mules  and  other  property — and  how  could  the  Mormons 
consistently  keep  up  their  coveted  resemblance  to  the  Israelitish  tribes  and 
not  seize  the  "  spoil "  of  an  enemy  when  the  Lord  had  so  manifestly 
"  delivered  it  into  their  hand  ?  " 

Wherefore,  according  to  Mrs.  C.  V.  Waite's  entertaining  book,  "  The 
Mormon  Prophet,"  it  transpired  that — 

"  A '  revelation '  from  Brigham  Young,  as  Great  Grand  Archee  or  God, 
'was  dispatched  to  President  J.  C.  Haight,  Bishop  Higbee  and  J.  D.  Lee 
(adopted  son  of  Brigham),  commanding  them  to  raise  all  the  forces  they 
could  muster  and  trust,  follow  those  cursed  Gentiles  (so  read  the  revelation), 
attack  them  disguised  as  Indians,  and  with  the  arrows  of  the  Almighty  make 
a  clean  sweep  of  them,  and  leave  none  to  tell  the  tale  ;  and  if  they  needed 
any  assistance  they  were  commanded  to  hire  the  Indians  as  their  allies, 
promising  them  a  share  of  the  booty.  They  were  to  be  neither  slothful  nor 
negligent  in  their  duty,  and  to  be  punctual  in  sending  the  teams  back  to 
him  before  winter  set  in,  for  this  was  the  mandate  of  Almighty  God." 


THE    MOUNTAIN    MEADOWS    MASSACRE.  577 

The  command  of  the  "  revelation  "  was  faithfully  obeyed.  A  large  party 
of  Mormons,  painted  and  tricked  out  as  Indians,  overtook  the  train  of  emi 
grant  wagons  some  three  hundred  miles  south  of  Salt  Lake  City,  and  made 
an  attack.  But  the  emigrants  threw  up  earthworks,  made  fortresses  of  their 
wagons  and  defended  themselves  gallantly  and  successfully  for  five  days ! 
Your  Missouri  or  Arkansas  gentleman  is  not  much  afraid  of  the  sort  of 
scurvy  apologies  for  "  Indians "  which  the  southern  part  of  Utah  affords. 
He  would  stand  up  and  fight  five  hundred  of  them. 

At  the  end  of  the  five  days  the  Mormons  tried  military  strategy.  They 
retired  to  the  upper  end  of  the  "  Meadows,"  resumed  civilized  apparel, 
washed  off  their  paint,  and  then,  heavily  armed,  drove  down  in  wagons  to 
the  beleaguered  emigrants,  bearing  a  flag  of  truce !  When  the  emigrants 
saw  white  men  coming  they  threw  down  their  guns  and  welcomed  them 
with  cheer  after  cheer !  And,  all  unconscious  of  the  poetry  of  it,  no  doubt, 
they  lifted  a  little  child  aloft,  dressed  in  white,  in  answer  to  the  flag  of 
truce ! 

The  leaders  of  the  timely  white  "  deliverers  "  were  President  Haight  and 
Bishop  John  D.  Lee,  of  the  Mormon  Church.  Mr.  Cradlebaugh,  who  served 
a  term  as  a  Federal  Judge  in  Utah  and  afterward  was  sent  to  Congress  from 
Nevada,  tells  in  a  speech  delivered  in  Congress  how  these  leaders  next  pro 
ceeded  : 

"  They  professed  to  be  on  good  terms  with  the  Indians,  and  represented 
them  as  being  very  mad.  They  also  proposed  to  intercede  and  settle  the 
matter  with  the  Indians.  After  several  hours  parley  they,  having  (appa 
rently)  visited  the  Indians,  gave  the  ultimatum  of  the  savages  ;  which  was, 
that  the  emigrants  should  march  out  of  their  camp,  leaving  everything  be 
hind  them,  even  their  guns.  It  was  promised  by  the  Mormon  bishops  that 
they  would  bring  a  force  and  guard  the  emigrants  back  to  the  settlements. 
The  terms  were  agreed  to,  the  emigrants  being  desirous  of  saving  the  lives 
of  their  families.  The  Mormons  retired,  and  subsequently  appeared  with 
thirty  or  forty  armed  men.  The  emigrants  were  marched  out,  the  women 
and  children  in  front  and  the  men  behind,  the  Mormon  guard  being  in  the 
rear.  When  they  had  marched  in  this  way  about  a  mile,  at  a  given  signal 
the  slaughter  commenced.  The  men  were  almost  all  shot  down  at  the  first 
fire  from  the  guard.  Two  only  escaped,  who  fled  to  the  desert,  and  were 
followed  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  before  they  were  overtaken  and 
slaughtered.  The  women  and  children  ran  on,  two  or  three  hundred  yards 
further,  when  they  were  overtaken  and  with  the  aid  of  the  Indians  they 
were  slaughtered.  Seventeen  individuals  only,  of  all  the  emigrant  party, 
were  spared,  and  they  were  little  children,  the  eldest  of  them  being  only 
seven  years  old.  Thus,  on  the  10th  day  of  September,  1857,  was  consum 
mated  one  of  the  most  cruel,  cowardly  and  bloody  murders  known  in  our 
history." 

The  number  of  persons  butchered  by  the  Mormons  on  this  occasion  wavs 
one  hundred  and  twenty. 

With  unheard-of  temerity  Judge  Cradlebaugh  opened  his  court  and  pro- 

37f 


578  APPENDIX    B. 

ceeded  to  make  Mormondorn  answer  for  the  massacre.  And  what  a  spectacle 
it  must  have  been  to  see  this  grim  veteran,  solitary  and  alone  in  his  pride 
and  his  pluck,  glowering  down  on  his  Mormon  jury  and  Mormon  auditory, 
deriding  them  by  turns,  and  by  turns  "  breathing  threatenings  and  slaugh 
ter  ! " 

An  editorial  in  the  Territorial  Enterprise  of  that  day  says  of  him  and  of 
the  occasion : 

"  He  spoke  and  acted  with  the  fearlessness  and  resolution  of  a  Jackson  ; 
but  the  jury  failed  to  indict,  or  even  report  on  the  charges,  while  threats  of 
violence  were  heard  in  every  quarter,  and  an  attack  on  the  U.  S.  troops  in 
timated,  if  he  persisted  in  his  course. 

"  Finding  that  nothing  could  be  done  with  the  juries,  they  were  discharged, 
with  a  scathing  rebuke  from  the  judge.  And  then,  sitting  as  a  committing 
magistrate,  he  commenced  Ms  task  alone.  He  examined  witnesses,  made 
arrests  in  every  quarter,  and  created  a  consternation  in  the  camps  of  the 
saints  greater  than  any  they  had  ever  witnessed  before,  since  Mormondom 
was  born.  At  last  accounts  terrified  elders  and  bishops  were  decamping  to 
save  their  necks  ;  and  developments  of  the  most  startling  character  were 
being  made,  implicating  the  highest  Church  dignitaries  in  the  many  murders 
and  robberies  committed  upon  the  Gentiles  during  the  past  eight  years." 

Had  Harney  been  Governor,  Cradlebaugh  would  have  been  supported  in 
his  work,  and  the  absolute  proofs  adduced  by  him  of  Mormon  guilt  in  this 
massacre  and  in  a  number  of  previous  murders,  would  have  conferred  gra 
tuitous  coffins  upon  certain  citizens,  together  with  occasion  to  use  them. 
But  dimming  was  the  Federal  Governor,  and  he,  under  a  curious  pretense 
of  impartiality,  sought  to  screen  the  Mormons  from  the  demands  of  justice. 
On  one  occasion  he  even  went  so  far  as  to  publish  his  protest  against  the  use 
of  the  U.  S.  troops  in  aid  of  Cradlebaugh's  proceedings. 

Mrs.  C.  V.  Waite  closes  her  interesting  detail  of  the  great  massacre  with 
the  following  remark  and  accompanying  summary  of  the  testimony — and 
the  summary  is  concise,  accurate  and  reliable : 

"  For  the  benefit  of  those  who  may  still  be  disposed  to  doubt  the  guilt  of 
Young  and  his  Mormons  in  this  transaction,  the  testimony  is  here  collated 
and  circumstances  given  which  go  not  merely  to  implicate  but  to  fasten 
conviction  upon  them  by  '  confirmations  strong  as  proofs  of  Holy  Writ : ' 

"  1.  The  evidence  of  Mormons  themselves,  engaged  in  the  affair,  as  shown 
by  the  statements  of  Judge  Cradlebaugh  and  Deputy  U.  S.  Marshal  Rodgers. 
>  "  2.  The  failure  of  Brigham  Young  to  embody  any  account  of  it  in  his 
Report  as  Superintendent  of  Indian  Affairs.  Also  his  failure  to  make  any 
allusion  to  it  whatever  from  the  pulpit,  until  several  years  after  the  occur 
rence. 

"  3.  The  flight  to  the  mountains  of  men  high  in  authority  in  the  Mormon 
Church  and  State,  when  this  affair  was  brought  to  the  ordeal  of  a  judicial 
investigation. 

"  4.  The  failure  of  the  Deseret  News,  the  Church  organ,  and  the  only 
paper  then  published  in  the  Territory,  to  notice  the  massacre  until  several 


THE    MOUNTAIN    MEADOWS    MASSACRE.  579 

months  afterward,  and  then  only  to  deny  that  Mormons  were  engaged 
in  it. 

"  5.  The  testimony  of  the  children  saved  from  the  massacre. 

"  <5.  The  children  and  the  property  of  the  emigrants  found  in  possession 
of  the  Mormons,  and  that  possession  traced  back  to  the  very  day  after  the 
massacre. 

"  7.  The  statements  of  Indians  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  scene  of  the 
massacre :  these  statements  are  shown,  not  only  by  Cradlebaugh  and 
Rodgers,  but  by  a  number  of  military  officers,  and  by  J.  Forney,  who  was, 
in  1859,  Superintendent  of  Indian  Affairs  for  the  Territory.  To  all  these 
were  such  statements  freely  and  frequently  made  by  the  Indians. 

"  8.  The  testimony  of  R.  P.  Campbell,  Capt.  2d  Dragoons,  who  was  sent 
in  the  Spring  of  1859  to  Santa  Clara,  to  protect  travelers  on  the  road  to 
California  and  to  inquire  into  Indian  depredations." 


c. 


CONCERNING  A  FRIGHTFUL  ASSASSINATION  THAT  WAS  NEVER 
CONSUMMATED. 

[!F  ever  there  was  a  harmless  man,  it  is  Conrad  Wiegand,  of  Gold  Hill, 
Nevada.  If  ever  there  was  a  gentle  spirit  that  thought  itself  uufired  gun 
powder  and  latent  ruin,  it  is  Conrad  Wiegand.  If  ever  there  was  an  oyster 
that  fancied  itself  a  whale  ;  or  a  jack-o'lantern,  confined  to  a  swamp,  that 
fancied  itself  a  planet  with  a  billion-mile  orbit ;  or  a  summer  zephyr  that 
deemed  itself  a  hurricane,  it  is  Conrad  Wiegand.  Therefore,  what  wonder  is 
it  that  when  he  says  a  thing,  he  thinks  the  world  listens  ;  that  when  he 
does  a  thing  the  world  stands  still  to  look  ;  and  that  when  he  suffers,  there 
is  a  convulsion  of  nature  ?  When  I  met  Conrad,  he  was  "  Superintendent  of 
the  Gold  Hill  Assay  Office  " — and  he  was  not  only  its  Superintendent,  but  its 
entire  force.  And  he  was  a  street  preacher,  too,  with  a  mongrel  religion  of 
his  own  invention,  whereby  he  expected  to  regenerate  the  universe.  This 
was  years  ago.  Here  latterly  he  has  entered  journalism  ;  and  his  journalism 
is  what  it  might  be  expected  to  be  :  colossal  to  ear,  but  pigmy  to  the  eye. 
It  is  extravagant  grandiloquence  confined  to  a  newspaper  about  the  size  of  a 
double  letter  sheet.  He  doubtless  edits,  sets  the  type,  and  prints  his  paper, 
all  alone  ;  but  he  delights  to  speak  of  the  concern  as  if  it  occupies  a  block 
and  employs  a  thousand  men. 

[Something  less  than  two  years  ago,  Conrad  assailed  several  people 
mercilessly  in  his  little  "  People's  Tribune,"  and  got  himself  into  trouble. 
Straightway  he  airs  the  affair  in  the  "  Territorial  Enterprise,"  in  a  commu 
nication  over  his  own  signature,  and  I  propose  to  reproduce  it  here,  in  all  its 
native  simplicity  and  more  than  human  candor.  Long  as  it  is,  it  is  well 
worth  reading,  for  it  is  the  richest  specimen  of  journalistic  literature  the 
history  of  America  can  furnish,  perhaps :] 

From  the  Territorial  Enterprise,  Jan.  20, 1870. 
A  SEEMING  PLOT  FOR  ASSASSINATION  MISCARRIED. 


To  THE  EDITOR  OF  THE  ENTERPRISE  :  Months  ago,  when  Mr.  Sutro  in 
cidentally  exposed  mining  management  on  the  Comstock,  and  among  others 


PERSECUTION    OF    THE     HERO.  581 

roused  me  to  protest  against  its  continuance,  in  great  kindness  you  warned 
me  that  any  attempt  by  publications,  by  public  meetings  and  by  legislative 
action,  aimed  at  the  correction  of  chronic  mining  evils  in  Storey  County, 
must  entail  upon  me  (a)  business  ruin,  (b)  the  burden  of  all  its  costs,  (c)  per 
sonal  violence,  and  if  my  purpose  were  persisted  in,  then  (d)  assassination, 
and  after  all  nothing  would  be  effected. 

TOUR  PROPHECY   FULFILLING. 

Iii  large  part  at  least  your  prophecies  have  been  fulfilled,  for  (a)  assaying, 
which  was  well  attended  to  in  the  Gold  Hill  Assay  Office  (of  which  I  am 
superintendent),  in  consequence  of  my  publications,  has  been  taken  else 
where,  so  the  President  of  one  of  the  companies  assures  me.  With  no 
reason  assigned,  other  work  has  been  taken  away.  With  but  one  or  two 
important  exceptions,  our  assay  business  now  consists  simply  of  the  (/leanings 
of  the  vicinity.  (6)  Though  my  own  personal  donations  to  the  People's 
Tribute  Association  have  already  exceeded  $1,500,  outside  of  our  own  num 
bers  we  have  received  (in  money)  less  than  $300  as  contributions  and  sub 
scriptions  for  the  journal,  (c)  On  Thursday  last,  on  the  main  street  in  Gold 
Hill,  near  noon,  with  neither  warning  nor  cause  assigned,  by  a  powerful 
blow  I  was  felled  to  the  ground,  and  while  down  I  was  kicked  by  a  man 
who  it  would  seem  had  been  led  to  believe  that  I  had  spoken  derogatorily  of 
him.  By  whom  he  was  so  induced  to  believe  I  am  as  yet  unable  to  say.  On 
Saturday  last  I  was  again  assailed  and  beaten  by  a  man  who  first  informed 
me  why  he  did  so,  and  who  persisted  in  making  his  assault  even  after  the 
erroneous  impression  under  which  he  also  was  at  first  laboring  had  been 
cleanly  and  repeatedly  pointed  out.  This  same  man,  after  failing  through 
intimidation  to  elicit  from  me  the  names  of  our  editorial  contributors,  against 
giving  which  he  knew  me  to  be  pledged,  beat  himself  weary  upon  me  with 
a  raw  hide,  I  not  resisting,  and  then  pantingly  threatened  me  with  permanent 
disfiguring  mayhem,  if  ever  again  I  should  introduce  his  name  into  print, 
and  who  but  a  few  minutes  before  his  attack  upon  me  assured  me  that  the 
only  reason  I  was  "permitted"  to  reach  home  alive  on  Wednesday  evening 
last  (at  which  time  the  PEOPLE'S  TRIBUNE  was  issued)  was,  that  he  deems 
me  only  half-witted,  and  be  it  remembered  the  very  next  morning  I  was 
knocked  down  and  kicked  by  a  man  who  seemed  to  be  prepared  for  flight. 

[He  sees  doom  impending  :] 

WHEN  WILL  THE  CIRCLE  JOIN? 

How  long  before  the  whole  of  your  prophecy  will  be  fulfilled  I  cannot 
eay,  but  under  the  shadow  of  so  much  fulfillment  in  so  short  a  time,  and 
with  such  threats  from  a  man  who  is  one  of  the  most  prominent  exponents 
of  the  San  Francisco  mining-ring  staring  me  and  this  whole  community 
defiantly  in  the  face  and  pointing  to  a  completion  of  your  augury,  do  you 
blame  me  for  feeling  that  this  communication  is  the  last  I  shall  ever  write 
for  the  Press,  especially  when  a  sense  alike  of  personal  self-respect,  of  duty 
to  this  money-oppressed  and  fear-ridden  community,  and  of  American  fealty 


582  APPENDIX    C. 

to  the  spirit  of  true  Liberty  all  command  me,  and  each  more  loudly  than 
love  of  life  itself,  to  declare  the  name  of  that  prominent  man  to  be  JOHN 
B.  WINTERS,  President  of  the  Yellow  Jacket  Company,  a  political  aspirant 
and  a  military  General  ?  The  name  of  his  partially  duped  accomplice  and 
abettor  in  this  last  marvelous  assault,  is  no  other  than  PHILIP  LYNCH, 
Editor  and  Proprietor  of  the  Gold  Hill  News. 

Despite  the  insult  and  wrong  heaped  upon  me  by  John  B.  Winters,  on 
Saturday  afternoon,  only  a  glimpse  of  which  I  shall  be  able  to  afford  your 
readers,  so  much  do  I  deplore  clinching  (by  publicity)  a  serious  mistake  of 
any  one,  man  or  woman,  committed  under  natural  and  not  self-wrought 
passion,  in  view  of  his  great  apparent  excitement  at  the  time  and  in  view  of 
the  almost  perfect  privacy  of  the  assault,  I  am  far  from  sure  that  I  should 
not  have  given  him  space  for  repentance  before  exposing  him,  were  it  not 
that  he  himself  has  so  far  exposed  the  matter  as  to  make  it  the  common 
talk  of  the  town  that  he  has  horsewhipped  me.  That  fact  having  been 
made  public,  all  the  facts  in  connection  need  to  be  also,  or  silence  on  my 
part  would  seem  more  than  singular,  and  with  many  would  be  proof  either 
that  I  was  conscious  of  some  unworthy  aim  in  publishing  the  article,  or  else 
that  my  "  non-combatant "  principles  are  but  a  convenient  cloak  alike  of  physi 
cal  and  moral  cowardice.  I  therefore  shall  try  to  present  a  graphic  but 
truthful  picture  of  this  whole  affair,  but  shall  forbear  all  comments,  pre 
suming  that  the  editors  of  our  own  journal,  if  others  do  not,  will  spc.ak 
freely  and  fittingly  upon  this  subject  in  our  next  number,  whether  I  shall 
then  be  dead  or  living,  for  my  death  will  not  stop,  though  it  may  suspend, 
the  publication  of  the  PEOPLE'S  TRIBUNE. 

[The  "non-combatant"  sticks  to  principle,  but  takes  along  a  friend  or  two 
of  a  conveniently  different  stripe :  ] 

THE  TRAP  SET. 

On  Saturday  morning  John  B.  Winters  sent  verbal  word  to  the  Gold  Hill 
Assay  Office  that  he  desired  to  see  me  at  the  Yellow  Jacket  office.  Though 
such  a  request  struck  me  as  decidedly  cool  in  view  of  his  own  recent  dis 
courtesies  to  me  there  alike  as  a  publisher  and  as  a  stockholder  in  the 
Yellow  Jacket  mine,  and  though  it  seemed  to  me  more  like  a  summons 
than  the  courteous  request  by  one  gentleman  to  another  for  a  favor,  hoping 
that  some  conference  with  Sharon  looking  to  the  betterment  of  mining  mat 
ters  in  Nevada  might  arise  from  it,  I  felt  strongly  inclined  to  overlook  what 
possibly  was  simply  an  oversight  in  courtesy.  But  as  then  it  had  only  been 
two  days  since  I  had  been  bruised  and  beaten  under  a  hasty  and  false 
apprehension  of  facts,  my  caution  was  somewhat  aroused.  Moreover  I  re 
membered  sensitively  his  contemptuousness  of  manner  to  me  at  my  last 
interview  in  his  office.  I  therefore  felt  it  needful,  if  I  went  at  all,  to  go 
accompanied  by  a  friend  whom  he  would  not  dare  to  treat  with  incivility, 
and  whose  presence  with  me  might  secure  exemption  from  insult.  Accord 
ingly  I  asked  a  neighbor  to  accompany  me. 


PRECAUTIONARY  MEASURES  TAKEN.      583 


THE  TRAP  ALMOST  DETECTED. 

Although.  I  was  not  then  aware  of  this  fact,  it  would  seem  that  previous 
to  my  request  this  same  neighbor  had  heard  Dr.  Zabriskie  state  publicly  in 
a  saloon,  that  Mr.  Winters  had  told  him  he  had  decided  either  to  kill  or  to 
horsewhip  me,  but  had  not  finally  decided  on  which.  My  neighbor,  there 
fore,  felt  unwilling  to  go  down  with  me  until  he  had  first  called  on  Mr. 
Winters  alone.  He  therefore  paid  him  a  visit.  From  that  interview  he 
assured  me  that  he  gathered  the  impression  that  he  did  not  believe  I  would 
have  any  difficulty  with  Mr.  Winters,  and  that  he  (Winters)  would  call  on 
me  at  four  o'clock  in  my  own  office. 

MY  OWN  PRECAUTIONS. 

As  Sheriff  Cummings  was  in  Gold  Hill  that  afternoon,  and  as  I  desired 
to  converse  with  him  about  the  previous  assault,  I  invited  him  to  my  office, 
and  he  came.  Although  a  half  hour  had  passed  beyond  four  o'clock,  Mr. 
Winters  had  not  called,  and  we  both  of  us  began  preparing  to  go  home. 
Just  then,  Philip  Lynch,  Publisher  of  the  Gold  Hill  News,  came  in  and  said, 
blandly  and  cheerily,  as  if  bringing  good  news  : 

"  Hello,  John  B.  Winters  wants  to  see  you." 

I  replied,  "  Indeed  !  Why  he  sent  me  word  that  he  would  call  on  me 
here  this  afternoon  at  four  o'clock  !  " 

"O,  well,  it  don't  do  to  be  too  ceremonious  just  now,  he's  in  my  office, 
and  that  will  do  as  well — come  on  in,  Winters  wants  to  consult  with  you 
alone.  He's  got  something  to  say  to  you." 

Though  slightly  uneasy  at  this  change  of  programme,  yet  believing  that 
in  an  editor's  house  I  ought  to  be  safe,  and  anyhow  that  I  would  be  within 
hail  of  the  street,  I  hurriedly,  and  but  partially  whispered  my  dim  apprehen 
sions  to  Mr.  Cummings,  and  asked  him  if  he  would  not  keep  near  enough 
to  hear  my  voice  in  case  I  should  call.  He  consented  to  do  so  while  waiting 
for  some  other  parties,  and  to  come  in  if  he  heard  my  voice  or  thought  I  had 
need  of  protection. 

On  reaching  the  editorial  part  of  the  News  office,  which  viewed  from  tLe 
street  is  dark,  I  did  not  see  Mr.  Winters,  and  again  my  misgivings  arose. 
Had  I  paused  long  enough  to  consider  the  case,  I  should  have  invited  Sheriff 
Cummings  in,  but  as  Lynch  went  down  stairs,  he  said :  "  This  way,  Wie- 
gand — it's  best  to  be  private,"  or  some  such  remark. 

[I  do  not  desire  to  strain  the  reader's  fancy,  hurtfully,  and  yet  it  would 
be  a  favor  to  me  if  he  would  try  to  fancy  this  lamb  in  battle,  or  the  duelling 
ground  or  at  the  head  of  a  vigilance  committee — M.  T. :] 

I  followed,  and  without  Mr.  Cummings,  and  without  arms,  which  I  never 
do  or  will  carry,  unless  as  a  soldier  in  war,  or  unless  I  should  yet  come  to 
feel  I  must  fight  a  duel,  or  to  join  and  aid  in  the  ranks  of  a  necessary  Vigi 
lance  Committee.  But  by  following  I  made  a  fatal  mistake.  Following 


584  APPENDIX    C. 

was  entering  a  trap,  and  whatever  animal  suffers  itself  to  be  caugJit  should 
expect  the  common  fate  of  a  caged  rat,  as  I  fear  events  to  come  will  prove. 

Traps  commonly  are  not  set  for  benevolence. 

[His  body-guard  is  shut  out :] 

THE  TRAP  INSIDE. 

I  followed  Lynch  down  stairs.  At  their  foot  a  door  to  the  left  opened 
into  a  small  room.  From  that  room  another  door  opened  into  yet  anotlwr 
room,  and  once  entered  I  found  myself  inveigled  into  what  many  will  ever 
henceforth  regard  as  a  private  subterranean  Gold  Hill  den,  admirably  adapt 
ed  in  proper  hands  to  the  purposes  of  murder,  raw  or  disguised,  for  from  it, 
with  both  or  even  one  door  closed,  when  too  late,  I  saw  that  I  could  not  be 
heard  by  Sheriff  Cummings,  and  from  it,  BY  VIOLENCE  AND  BY  FORCE, 
I  was  prevented  from  making  a  peaceable  exit,  when  I  thought  I  saw  tJ>e 
studious  object  of  this  "consultation"  was  no  other  than  to  compass  my 
killing,  in  the  presence  of  Philip  Lynch  as  a  witness,  as  soon  as  by  insult  a 
proverbially  excitable  man  should  be  exasperated  to  the  point  of  assailing 
Mr.  Winters,  so  that  Mr.  Lynch,  by  his  conscience  and  by  his  well  known 
tenderness  of  heart  toward  the  rich  and  potent  would  be  compelled  to  testify 
that  he  saw  Gen.  John  B.  Winters  kill  Conrad  Wiegaud  in  "  self-defence," 
But  I  am  going  too  fast. 

OUR    HOST. 

Mr.  Lynch  was  present  during  the  most  of  the  time  (say  a  little  short  of 
an  hour),  but  three  times  he  left  the  room.  His  testimony,  therefore,  wou'Jd 
be  available  only  as  to  the  bulk  of  what  transpired.  On  entering  this 
carpeted  den  I  was  invited  to  a  seat  near  one  corner  of  the  room.  Mr.  Lynch 
took  a  seat  near  the  window.  J.  B.  Winters  sat  (at  first)  near  the  door,  and 
began  his  remarks  essentially  as  follows  : 

"  I  have  come  here  to  exact  of  you  a  retraction,  in  black  and  white,  of 
those  damnably  false  charges  which  you  have  preferred  against  me  in  that 

infamous  lying  sheet  of  yours,  and  you  must  declare  yourself 

their  author,  that  you  published  them  knowing  them  to  be  false,  and  that 
your  motives  were  malicious." 

"  Hold,  Mr.  Winters.  Your  language  is  insulting  and  your  demand  an 
enormity.  I  trust  I  was  not  invited  here  either  to  be  insulted  or  coerced. 
I  supposed  myself  here  by  invitation  of  Mr.  Lynch,  at  your  request." 

"  Nor  did  I  come  here  to  insult  you.  I  have  already  told  you  that  I  am 
here  for  a  very  different  purpose." 

"  Yet  your  language  has  been  offensive,  and  even  now  shows  strong  ex 
citement.  If  insult  is  repeated  I  shall  either  leave  the  room  or  call  in 
Sheriff  Cummings,  whom  I  just  left  standing  and  waiting  for  me  outside 
the  door." 

"  No,  you  won't,  sir.  You  may  just  as  well  understand  it  at  once  as  not 
Here  you  are  my  man,  and  I'll  tell  you  why  !  Months  ago  you  put  your 
property  out  of  your  hands,  boasting  that  you  did  so  to  escape  losing  it  on 
prosecution  for  libel." 


PRESSING    MATTERS.  585 

"  It  is  true  that  I  did  convert  all  my  immovable  property  into  personal 
property,  such  as  I  could  trust  safely  to  others,  and  chiefly  to  escape  ruin 
through  possible  libel  suits." 

"  Very  good,  sir.  Having  placed  yourself  beyond  the  pale  of  the  law, 
may  God  help  your  soul  if  you  DON'T  make  precisely  such  a  retraction  as  I 

have  demanded.  I've  got  you  now,  and  by before  you  can  get  out  of 

this  room  you've  got  to  both  write  and  sign  precisely  the  retraction  I  have 

demanded,  and  before  you  go,  anyhow — you low-lived lying 

— ,  I'll  teach  you  what  personal  responsibility  is  outside  of  the  law ; 

and,  by ,  Sheriff  Cummings  and  all  the  friends  you've  got  in  the  world 

besides,  can't  save  you,  you ,  etc. !  No,  sir.  I'm  alone  now,  and 

I'm  prepared  to  be  shot  down  just  here  and  now  rather  than  be  villified  by 
you  as  I  have  been,  and  suffer  you  to  escape  me  after  publishing  those 
charges,  not  only  here  where  I  am  known  and  universally  respected,  but 
where  I  am  not  personally  known  and  may  be  injured." 

I  confess  this  speech,  with  its  terrible  and  but  too  plainly  implied  threat 
of  killing  me  if  I  did  not  sign  the  paper  he  demanded,  terrified  me,  espe 
cially  as  I  saw  he  was  working  himself  up  to  the  highest  possible  pitch  of 
passion,  and  instinct  told  me  that  any  reply  other  than  one  of  seeming  con 
cession  to  his  demands  would  only  be  fuel  to  a  raging  fire,  so  I  replied  : 

"  Well,  if  I've  got  to  sign ,"  and  then  I  paused  some  time.  Resum 
ing,  I  said,  "  But,  Mr.  Winters,  you  are  greatly  excited.  Besides,  I  see  you 
are  laboring  under  a  total  misapprehension.  It  is  your  duty  not  to  inflame 
but  to  calm  yourself.  I  am  prepared  to  show  you,  if  you  will  only  point  out 
the  article  that  you  allude  to,  that  you  regard  as  '  charges '  what  no  calm 
and  logical  mind  has  any  right  to  regard  as  such.  Show  me  the  charges, 
and  I  will  try,  at  all  events ;  and  if  it  becomes  plain  that  no  charges  have 
been  preferred,  then  plainly  there  can  be  nothing  to  retract,  and  no  one 
could  rightly  urge  you  to  demand  a  retraction.  You  should  beware  of  mak 
ing  so  serious  a  mistake,  for  however  honest  a  man  may  be,  every  one  is 
liable  to  misapprehend.  Besides  you  assume  that  I  am  the  author  of  some 
certain  article  which  you  have  not  pointed  out.  It  is  hasty  to  do  so." 

He  then  pointed  to  some  numbered  paragraphs  in  a  TRIBUNE  article, 
headed  "  What's  the  Matter  with  Yellow  Jacket  ?  "  saying  "  That's  what  I 
refer  to." 

To  gain  time  for  general  reflection  and  resolution,  I  took  tip  the  paper 
and  looked  it  over  for  awhile,  he  remaining  silent,  and  as  I  hoped,  cooling. 
I  then  resumed,  saying,  "  As  I  supposed.  I  do  not  admit  having  written 
that  article,  nor  nave  you  any  right  to  assume  so  important  a  point,  and 
then  base  important  action  upon  your  assumption.  You  might  deeply 
regret  it  afterwards.  In  my  published  Address  to  the  People,  I  notified 
the  world  that  no  information  as  to  the  authorship  of  any  article  would  be 
given  without  the  consent  of  the  writer.  I  therefore  cannot  honorably  tell 
you  who  wrote  that  article,  nor  can  you  exact  it." 

"If  you  are  not  the  author,  then  I  do  demand  to  know  who  is ? " 

"  I  must  decline  to  say." 


586  APPENDIX    C. 

"  Then,  by ,  I  brand  you  as  its  author,  and  shall  treat  you  accord 
ingly." 

"  Passing  that  point,  the  most  important  misapprehension  which  I  notice 
is,  that  you  regard  them  as  '  charges '  at  all,  when  their  context,  both  at  their 
beginning  and  end,  show  they  are  not.  These  words  introduce  them  :  '  Such 
an  investigation  [just  before  indicated],  we  think  MIGHT  result  in  showing 
some  of  the  following  points.'  Then  follow  eleven  specifications,  and  the 
succeeding  paragraph  shows  that  the  suggested  investigation  '  might  EX 
ONERATE  those  who  are  generally  believed  guilty.'  You  see,  therefore, 
the  context  proves  they  are  not  preferred  as  charges,  and  this  you  seem  to 
have  overlooked." 

While  making  those  comments,  Mr.  Winters  frequently  interrupted  me  in 
such  a  way  as  to  convince  me  that  he  was  resolved  not  to  consider  candidly 
the  thoughts  contained  in  my  words.  He  insisted  upon  it  that  they  were 

charges,  and  "  By ,"  he  would  make  me  take  them  back  as  charges,  and 

he  referred  the  question  to  Philip  Lynch,  to  whom  I  then  appealed  as  a 
literary  man,  as  a  logician,  and  as  an  editor,  calling  his  attention  especially 
to  the  introductory  paragraph  just  before  quoted. 

He  replied, " If  they  are  not  charges,  they  certainly  are  insinuations'* 
whereupon  Mr.  Winters  renewed  his  demands  for  retraction  precisely  such 
as  he  had  before  named,  except  that  he  would  allow  me  to  state  who  did  write 
the  article  if  I  did  not  myself,  and  this  time  shaking  his  fist  in  my  face  with 
more  cursings  and  epithets. 

When  he  threatened  me  with  his  clenched  fist,  instinctively  I  tried  to 
rise  from  my  chair,  but  Winters  then  forcibly  thrust  me  down,  as  he  did 
every  other  time  (at  least  seven  or  eight),  when  under  similar  imminent 
danger  of  bruising  by  his  fist  (or  for  aught  I  could  know  worse  than  that 
after  the  first  stunning  blow),  which  he  could  easily  and  safely  to  himself 
have  dealt  me  so  long  as  he  kept  me  down  and  stood  over  me. 

This  fact  it  was,  which  more  than  anything  else,  convinced  me  that 
by  plan  and  plot  I  was  purposely  made  powerless  in  Mr.  Winters'  hands, 
and  that  he  did  not  mean  to  allow  me  that  advantage  of  being  afoot,  which 
he  possessed.  Moreover,  I  then  became  convinced,  that  Philip  Lynch  (and 
for  what  reason  I  wondered)  would  do  absolutely  nothing  to  protect  me  in 
his  own  house.  I  realized  then  the  situation  thoroughly.  I  had  found  it 
equally  vain  to  protest  or  argue,  and  I  would  make  no  unmanly  appeal  for 
pity,  still  less  apologize.  Yet  my  life  had  been  by  the  plainest  possible 
implication  threatened.  I  was  a  weak  man.  I  was  unarmed.  I  was  help 
lessly  down,  and  Winters  was  afoot  and  probably  armed.  Lynch  was  the 
only  "  witness."  The  statements  demanded,  if  given  and  not  explained, 
would  utterly  sink  me  in  my  own  self-respect,  in  my  family's  eyes,  and  in 
the  eyes  of  the  community.  On  the  other  hand,  should  I  give  the  author's 
name  how  could  I  ever  expect  that  confidence  of  the  People  which  I  should 
no  longer  deserve,  and  how  much  dearer  to  me  and  to  my  family  was  my 
life  than  the  life  of  the  real  author  to  his  friends.  Yet  life  seemed  dear  and 
each  minute  that  remained  seemed  precious  if  not  solemn.  I  sincerely  trust 


STRATEGY  AGAINST  STRENGTH.        587 

that  neither  you  nor  any  of  your  readers,  and  especially  none  with  families, 
may  ever  be  placed  in  such  seeming  direct  proximity  to  death  while  obliged 
to  decide  the  one  question  I  was  compelled  to,  viz. :  What  should  I  do — I,  a 
man  of  family,  and  not  as  Mr.  Winters  is,  "  alone." 

[The  reader  is  requested  not  to  skip  the  following. — M.  T. :] 

STRATEGY  AND  MESMERISM. 

To  gain  time  for  further  reflection,  and  hoping  that  by  a  seeming  acquies 
cence  I  might  regain  my  personal  liberty,  at  least  till  I  could  give  an  alarm, 
or  take  advantage  of  some  momentary  inadvertence  of  Winters,  and  then 
without  a  cowardly  flight  escape,  I  resolved  to  write  a  certain  kind  of  retrac 
tion,  but  previously  had  inwardly  decided 

First. — That  I  would  studiously  avoid  every  action  which  might  be  con 
strued  into  the  drawing  of  a  weapon,  even  by  a  self-infuj-iated  man,  no 
matter  what  amount  of  insult  might  be  heaped  upon  me,  for  it  seemed  to 
me  that  this  great  excess  of  compound  profanity,  foulness  and  epithet  must 
be  more  than  a  mere  indulgence,  and  therefore  must  have  some  object. 
"  Surely  in  vain  the  net  is  spread  in  the  sight  of  any  bird."  Therefore,  as 
before  without  thought,  I  thereafter  by  intent  kept  my  hands  away  from 
my  pockets,  and  generally  in  sight  and  spread  upon  my  knees. 

Second. — I  resolved  to  make  no  motion  with  my  arms  or  hands  which 
could  possibly  be  construed  into  aggression. 

Third. — I  resolved  completely  to  govern  my  outward  manner  and  sup 
press  indignation.  To  do  this,  I  must  govern  my  spirit.  To  do  that,  by  force 
of  imagination  I  was  obliged  like  actors  on  the  boards  to  resolve  myself  into 
an  unnatural  mental  state  and  see  all  things  through  the  eyes  of  an  assumed 
character. 

Fourth. — I  resolved  to  try  on  Winters,  silently,  and  unconsciously  to  him 
self  a  mesmeric  power  which  I  possess  over  certain  kinds  of  people,  and 
which  at  times  I  have  found  to  work  even  in  the  dark  over  the  lower 
animals. 

Does  any  one  smile  at  these  last  counts  ?  God  save  you  from  ever  being 
oWiged  to  beat  in  a  game  of  chess,  whose  stake  is  your  life,  you  having  but 
four  poor  pawns  and  pieces  and  your  adversary  with  his  full  force  unshorn. 
But  if  you  are,  provided  you  have  any  strength  with  breadth  of  will,  do  not 
despair.  Though  mesmeric  power  may  not  save  you,  it  may  help  you  ;  try 
it  at  all  events.  In  this  instance  I  was  conscious  of  power  coming  into  me, 
and  by  a  law  of  nature,  I  know  Winters  was  correspondingly  weakened.  If  I 
could  have  gained  more  time  I  am  sure  he  would  not  even  have  struck  me. 

It  takes  time  both  to  form  such  resolutions  and  to  recite  them.  That  time, 
however,  I  gained  while  thinking  of  my  retraction,  which  I  first  wrote  in 
pencil,  altering  it  from  time  to  time  till  I  got  it  to  suit  me,  my  aim  being  to 
make  it  look  like  a  concession  to  demands,  while  in  fact  it  should  tersely 
speak  the  truth  into  Mr.  Winters'  mind.  When  it  was  finished,  I  copied  it 
in  ink,  and  if  correctly  copied  from  my  first  draft  it  should  read  as  follows. 
In  copying  I  do  not  think  I  made  any  material  change. 


588  APPENDIX    C. 


COPY. 

To  Philip  Lynch,  Editor  of  the  Gold  Hill  News :  I  learn  that  Gen.  John 
B.  Winters  believes  the  following  (pasted  on)  clipping  from  the  PEOPLE'S 
TRIBUNE  of  January  to  contain  distinct  charges  of  mine  against  him  person,-- 
ally,  and  that  as  such  he  desires  me  to  retract  them  unqualifiedly. 

In  compliance  with  his  request,  permit  me  to  say  that,  although  Mr. 
Winters  and  I  see  this  matter  differently,  in  view  of  his  strong  feelings  in 
the  premises,  I  hereby  declare  that  I  do  not  know  those  "  charges  "  (if  such 
they  are)  to  be  true,  and  I  hope  that  a  critical  examination  would  altogether 
disprove  them.  CONRAD  WIEGAND. 

Gold  Hill,  January  15,  1870. 

I  then  read  what  I  had  written  and  handed  it  to  Mr.  Lynch,  whereupon 
Mr.  Winters  said : 

"  That's  not  satisfactory,  and  it  won't  do ; "  and  then  addressing  himself 
to  Mr.  Lynch,  he  further  said  :  "  How  does  it  strike  you  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  confess  I  don't  see  that  it  retracts  anything." 

"  Nor  do  I,"  said  Winters  ;  "  in  fact,  I  regard  it  as  adding  insult  to  injury. 
Mr.  Wlegand  you've  got  to  do  better  than  that.  You  are  not  the  man  who 
can  pull  wool  over  my  eyes." 

"  That,  sir,  is  the  only  retraction  I  can  write." 

"  No  it  isn't,  sir,  and  if  you  so  much  as  say  so  again  you  do  it  at  your 

peril,  for  I'll  thrash  you  to  within  an  inch  of  your  life,  and,  by ,  sir,  I 

don't  pledge  myself  to  spare  you  even  that  inch  either.  I  want  you  to  un 
derstand  I  have  asked  you  for  a  very  different  paper,  and  that  paper  you've 
got  to  sign." 

"  Mr.  Winters,  I  assure  you  that  I  do  not  wish  to  irritate  you,  but,  at  the 
same  time,  it  is  utterly  impossible  for  me  to  write  any  other  paper  than  that 
which  I  have  written.  If  you  are  resolved  to  compel  me  to  sign  something, 
Philip  Lynch's  hand  must  write  at  your  dictation,  and  if,  when  written,  I 
can  sign  it  I  will  do  so,  but  such  a  document  as  you  say  you  must  have  from 
me,  I  never  can  sign.  I  mean  what  I  say." 

"  Well,  sir,  what's  to  be  done  must  be  done  quickly,  for  I've  been  here 
long  enough  already.  I'll  put  the  thing  in  another  shape  (and  then  pointing 
to  the  paper) ;  don't  you  know  those  charges  to  be  false  ?  " 

"  I  do  not." 

"  Do  you  know  them  to  be  true  ?  " 

"  Of  my  own  personal  knowledge  I  do  not." 

"  Why  then  did  you  print  them  ?  " 

"  Because  rightly  considered  in  their  connection  they  are  not  charges,  but 
pertinent  and  useful  suggestions  in  answer  to  the  queries  of  a  correspondent 
who  stated  facts  which  are  inexplicable." 

"  Don't  you  know  that  /know  they  are  false  ?" 

"  If  you  do,  the  proper  course  is  simply  to  deny  them  and  court  an  inves 
tigation." 


A    GREAT    RELIEF    EXPERIENCED.  589 

"  And  do  YOU  claim  the  right  to  make  ME  come  out  and  deny  anything 
you  may  choose  to  write  and  print  ?  " 

To  that  question  I  think  I  made  no  reply,  and  he  then  further  said  : 
"  Come,  now,  we've  talked  about  the  matter  long  enough.  I  want  your  final 
answer — did  you  write  that  article  or  not  ?  " 

"  I  cannot  in  honor  tell  you  who  wrote  it." 

"  Did  you  not  see  it  before  it  was  printed  ?  " 

"  Most  certainly,  sir." 

"  And  did  you  deem  it  a  fit  thing  to  publish  ?  " 

"  Most  assuredly,  sir,  or  I  would  never  have  consented  to  its  appearance. 
Of  its  authorship  I  can  say  nothing  whatever,  but  for  its  publication  I  assume 
full,  sole  and  personal  responsibility." 

"  And  do  you  then  retract  it  or  not  ?  " 

"  Mr.  Winters,  if  my  refusal  to  sign  such  a  paper  as  you  have  demanded 
must  entail  upon  me  all  that  your  language  in  this  room  fairly  implies,  then 
I  ask  a  few  minutes  for  prayer." 

"  Prayer ! you,  this  is  not  your  hour  for  prayer — your  time  to 

pray  was  when  you  were  writing  those lying  charges.  Will  you  sign 

or  not  ?  " 

"  You  already  have  my  answer." 

"  What !  do  you  still  refuse  ?  " 

"  I  do,  sir." 

"  Take  that,  then,"  and  to  my  amazement  and  inexpressible  relief  he 
drew  only  a  rawhide  instead  of  what  I  expected — a  bludgeon  or  pistol. 
With  it,  as  he  spoke,  he  struck  at  my  left  ear  downwards,  as  if  to  tear  it  off, 
and  afterwards  on  the  side  of  the  head.  As  he  moved  away  to  get  a  better 
chance  for  a  more  effective  shot,  for  the  first  time  I  gained  a  chance  under 
peril  to  rise,  and  I  did  so  pitying  him  from  the  very  bottom  of  my  soul,  to 
think  that  one  so  naturally  capable  of  true  dignity,  power  and  nobility  could, 
by  the  temptations  of  this  State,  and  by  unfortunate  associations  and  aspira 
tions,  be  so  deeply  debased  as  to  find  in  such  brutality  anything  which  he 
could  call  satisfaction — but  the  great  hope  for  us  all  is  in  progress  and 
growth,  and  John  B.  Winters,  I  trust,  will  yet  be  able,  to  comprehend  my 
feelings. 

He  continued  to  beat  me  with  all  his  great  force,  until  absolutely  weary, 
exhausted  and  panting  for  breath.  I  still  adhered  to  my  purpose  of  non- 
aggressive  defence,  and  made  no  other  use  of  my  arms  than  to  defend  my 
head  and  face  from  further  disfigurement.  The  mere  pain  arising  from  the 
blows  he  inflicted  upon  my  person  was  of  course  transient,  and  my  clothing 
to  some  extent  deadened  its  severity,  as  it  now  hides  all  remaining  traces. 

When  I  supposed  he  was  through,  taking  the  butt  end  of  his  weapon  and 
shaking  it  in  my  face,  he  warned  me,  if  I  correctly  understood  him, -of  more 
yet  to  come,  and  furthermore  said,  if  ever  I  again  dared  introduce  his  name 
to  print,  in  either  my  own  or  any  other  public  journal,  he  would  cut  off  my 
left  ear  (and  I  do  not  think  he  was  jesting)  and  send  me  home  to  my  family 
a  visibly  mutilated  man,  to  be  a  standing  warning  to  all  low-lived  puppies 


590  APPENDIX    C. 

who  seek  to  blackmail  gentlemen  and  to  injure  their  good  names.  And  when 
he  did  so  operate,  he  informed  me  that  his  implement  would  not  be  a  whip 
but  a  knife. 

When  he  had  said  this,  unaccompanied  by  Mr.  Lynch,  as  I  remember  it, 
he  left  the  room,  for  I  sat  down  by  Mr.  Lynch,  exclaiming :  "  The  man  is 
mad — he  is  utterly  mad — this  step  is  his  ruin — it  is  a  mistake — it  would  be 
ungenerous  in  me,  despite  of  all  the  ill  usage  I  have  here  received,  to  expose 
him,  at  least  until  he  has  had  an  opportunity  to  reflect  upon  the  matter.  I 
shall  be  in  no  haste." 

"Winters  is  very  mad  just  now,"  replied  Mr.  Lynch,  "but  when  he  is 
himself  he  is  one  of  the  finest  men  I  ever  met.  In  fact,  he  told  me  the 
reason  he  did  not  meet  you  upstairs  was  to  spare  you  the  humiliation  of  a 
beating  in  the  sight  of  others." 

I  submit  that  that  unguarded  remark  of  Philip  Lynch  convicts  him  of 
having  been  privy  in  advance  to  Mr.  Winters'  intentions  whatever  they 
may  have  been,  or  at  least  to  his  meaning  to  make  an  assault  upon  me, 
but  I  leave  to  others  to  determine  how  much  censure  an  editor  deserves  for 
inveigling  a  weak,  non-combatant  man,  also  a  publisher,  to  a  pen  of  his  own 
to  be  horsewhipped,  if  no  worse,  for  the  simple  printing  of  what  is  verbally 
in  the  mouth  of  nine  out  of  ten  men,  and  women  too,  upon  the  street. 

While  writing  this  account  two  theories  have  occurred  to  me  as  possibly 
true  respecting  this  most  remarkable  assault : 

First — The  aim  may  have  been  simply  to  extort  from  me  such  admissions 
as  in  the  hands  of  money  and  influence  would  have  sent  me  to  the  Peniten 
tiary  for  libel.  This,  however,  seems  unlikely,  because  any  statements  elicited 
by  fear  or  force  could  not  be  evidence  in  law  or  could  be  so  explained  as  to 
have  no  force.  The  statements  wanted  so  badly  must  have  been  desired  for 
some  other  purpose. 

Second — The  other  theory  has  so  dark  and  wilfully  murderous  a  look 
that  I  shrink  from  writing  it,  yet  as  in  all  probability  my  death  at  the  earli 
est  practicable  moment  has  already  been  decreed,  I  feel  I  should  do  all  I  can 
before  my  hour  arrives,  at  least  to  show  others  how  to  break  up  that  aristo 
cratic  rule  and  combination  which  has  robbed  all  Nevada  of  true  freedom,  if 
not  of  manhood  itself.  Although  I  do  not  prefer  this  hypothesis  as  a 
"charge,"  I  feel  that  as  an  American  citizen  I  still  have  a  right  both  to  think 
and  to  speak  my  thoughts  even  in  the  land  of  Sharon  and  Winters,  and  as 
much  so  respecting  the  theory  of  a  brutal  assault  (especially  when  I  have 
been  its  subject)  as  respecting  any  other  apparent  enormity.  I  give  the  mat 
ter  simply  as  a  suggestion  which  may  explain  to  the  proper  authorities  and  to 
the  people  whom  they  should  represent,  a  well  ascertained  but  notwithstand 
ing  a  darkly  mysterious  fact.  The  scheme  of  the  assault  may  have  been 

First — To  terrify  me  by  making  me  conscious  of  my  own  helplessness 
after  making  actual  though  not  legal  threats  against  my  life. 

Second — To  imply  that  I  could  save  my  life  only  by  writing  or  signing 
certain  specific  statements  which  if  not  subsequently  explained  would  eter 
nally  have  branded  me  as  infamous  and  would  have  consigned  my  family  to 
shame  and  want,  and  to  the  dreadful  compassion  and  patronage  of  the  rich. 


AN    HEROIC    RESOLUTION.  59] 

Third — To  blow  my  brains  out  the  moment  I  had  signed,  thereby  pre 
venting  me  from  making  any  subsequent  explanation  such  as  could  remove 
the  infamy. 

Fourth — Philip  Lynch  to  be  compelled  to  testify  that  I  was  killed  by 
John  B.  Winters  in  self-defence,  for  the  conviction  of  Winters  would  bring 
him  in  as  an  accomplice.  If  that  icas  the  programme  in  John  B.  Winters' 
mind  nothing  saved  nay  life  but  my  persistent  refusal  to  sign,  when  that 
refusal  seemed  clearly  to  me  to  be  the  choice  of  death. 

The  remarkable  assertion  made  to  me  by  Mr.  Winters,  that  pity  only 
spared  my  life  on  Wednesday  evening  last,  almost  compels  me  to  believe 
that  at  first  he  could  not  have  intended  me  to  leave  that  room  alive  ;  and 
why  I  was  allowed  to,  unless  through  mesmeric  or  some  other  invisible  influ 
ence,  I  cannot  divine.  The  more  I  reflect  upon  this  matter,  the  more  probable 
as  true  does  this  horrible  interpretation  become. 

The  narration  of  these  things  I  might  have  spared  both  to  Mr.  Winters 
and  to  the  public  had  he  himself  observed  silence,  but  as  he  has  both  verb 
ally  spoken  and  suffered  a  thoroughly  garbled  statement  of  facts  to  appear 
in  the  Gold  Hill  News  I  feel  it  due  to  myself  no  less  than  to  this  community, 
and  to  the  entire  independent  press  of  America  and  Great  Britain,  to  give 
a  true  account  of  what  even  the  Gold  Hill  News  has  pronounced  a  disgrace 
ful  affair,  and  which  it  deeply  regrets  because  of  some  alleged  telegraphic 
mistake  in  the  account  of  it.  [Who  received  the  erroneous  telegrams  ?] 

Though  he  may  not  deem  it  prudent  to  take  my  life  just  now,  the  publi 
cation  of  this  article  I  feel  sure  must  compel  Gen.  Winters  (with  his  peculiar 
views  about  his  right  to  exemption  from  criticism  by  me}  to  resolve  on  my 
violent  death,  though  it  may  take  years  to  compass  it.  Notwithstanding  1 
bear  Mm  no  ill  will ;  and  if  W.  C.  Ralston  and  William  Sharon,  and  other 
members  of  the  San  Francisco  mining  and  milling  Ring  feel  that  he  above  all 
other  men  in  this  State  and  California  is  the  most  fitting  man  to  supervise 
and  control  Yellow  Jacket  matters,  until  I  am  able  to  vote  more  than  half 
their  stock  I  presume  he  will  be  retained  to  grace  his  present  post. 

Meantime,  I  cordially  invite  all  who  know  of  any  sort  of  important  villainy 
which  only  can  be  cured  by  exposure  (and  who  would  expose  it  if  they  felt 
sure  they  would  not  be  betrayed  under  bullying  threats),  to  communicate 
with  the  PEOPLE'S  TRIBUNE  ;  for  until  I  am  murdered,  so  long  as  I  can  raisa 
the  means  to  publish,  I  propose  to  continue  my  efforts  at  least  to  revive  the 
liberties  of  the  State,  to  curb  oppression,  and  to  benefit  man's  world  and 
God's  earth.  CONRAD  WIEGAND. 

[It  does  seem  a  pity  that  the  Sheriff  was  shut  out,  since  the  good  sense 
of  a  general  of  militia  and  of  a  prominent  editor  failed  to  teach  them 
that  the  merited  castigation  of  this  weak,  half-witted  child  was  a  thing  that 
ought  to  have  been  done  in  the  street,  where  the  poor  thing  could  have  a 
chance  to  run.  When  a  journalist  maligns  a  citizen,  or  attacks  his  good 
name  on  hearsay  evidence,  he  deserves  to  be  thrashed  for  it,  even  if  he  is  a 
"  non-combatant "  weakling ;  but  a  generous  adversary  would  at  least  allow 
euch  a  lamb  the  use  of  his  legs  at  such  a  time. — M.  T.J 


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